The 2025 season did not start as Raúl Fernández had hoped. The Trackhouse rider ended his Thailand Grand Prix with a retirement, while his teammate Ai Ogura finished in the top 5 in his first MotoGP race.
The only rider in the Aprilia clan to already have a year of experience on the RS-GP, Raul Fernandez was able to see the improvements in his machine this weekend, and managed to qualify in eighth position on the grid. An encouraging result for the rest of the season, especially since he generally rode in the same positions as Marco Bezzecchi, the brand's official rider. However, he was generally dominated by his rookie teammate, who made a smashing debut in the premier class.
A little jostled at the start of the sprint race, he made a mistake that forced him to go wide, and lost several places, which he was unable to recover. After crossing the finish line in 11th place, he displayed great disappointment and was determined not to repeat the same mistake in the main race on Sunday.
At the end of the 26 laps, the Spanish driver was delighted to have achieved this objective and to have mastered what he considers to be "one of [his] best races in MotoGP in terms of management." Unfortunately for him, his front tyre overheated abnormally, causing him to drop down the rankings and eventually retire.
“I prepared everything well, and the positive thing is that during the first 15 laps I was in a very good position. I was fighting well and managing everything to prepare for the last part of the race. After lap 15, when I was sixth or seventh, I tried to pass Jack and the front tire overheated. From then on, the tire didn’t work anymore and I had to retire because I was 1″5 slower. The positive thing is that the bike was working very well. I feel super comfortable with the bike.”, he explained during his debriefing reported by Motosan.
“We have a lot of positives on the bike, but we have to analyse why we had this kind of overheating [with] the hard front tyre. Yes I slipped twice when I tried to attack Jack but after that I was practically alone, so I don’t really understand what happened. […] It’s a bit frustrating. When you don’t have everything in your hands or you can’t control everything, you can’t tell the difference.”
Left without any points from Thailand, Raúl Fernández remains confident given what his bike showed during the weekend and hopes to make up for it next week in Argentina.
