MotoGP, Hungary Day 3: Ai Ogura (Aprilia/4) saves Noale's honor at Balaton Park!

The unfortunate Jorge Martin brought down three-quarters of the Aprilias on the very first corner of the Hungarian Grand Prix. MotoGP At the Balaton Park circuit, the Noale firm could only rely on Ai Ogura to save his weekend…

However, while the Japanese driver has often shown himself to be very fast in the second half of the race, He himself admitted last Thursday regarding his racing debut, "I tend to be in economy mode, even though I don't want to be.", to temper his splendid pace shown at Mugello in the final part of the race.

In Hungary, a direct passage to Q1 did not really allow him to take advantage of it, and number 79 started from tenth place on the grid, for 26 laps of the narrow Balaton Park circuit.

As the lights went out, the pack was heading towards the first corner when Jorge Martin played bowling, ending the race for drivers including himself.
Ai Ogura narrowly avoided chaos, but was pushed wide and completed the first lap losing a position, in 11th place.
Quickly beginning his comeback while sporting the eye-catching colors of the American team's title partner, he was in 7th place at the halfway point, then 6th at the 14th lap.
As the laps went by, the SuperFile Trackhouse MotoGP Team rider climbed back up to 5th place and, with two laps to go, after several attempts on, he took 4th place, without however managing to close the gap in front of him to get involved in the fight for the podium.

#79 Ai Ogura: "Fourth place seems okay, but in terms of performance, it was far from good. First of all, my start was very good. I saw a black bike on the inside coming much faster into the first corner and the bike's movement wasn't really clean, so I immediately thought something was going to happen."
Fortunately, I was able to react quickly enough and avoid all that chaos, but I lost a lot of positions because I was on the outside. Then, being behind four or five drivers, I couldn't go as fast as I wanted, especially since the pace in the first half of the race was very, very slow, which cost me a lot of time.
Once I managed to overtake all those drivers, the pace was fairly acceptable, but it wasn't really good.

Despite his 4th place finish in the GP, Ai Ogura drops one place in the championship, losing to a certain Marc Marquez...
His video summary, as concise as it is clear, speaks for itself.

Davide Brivio, Team Principal: “We were very unlucky at the start. I think Raul could have had a great race, but unfortunately, he was involved in the first-corner crash. We clearly missed an opportunity. Fortunately, there's no major damage. He just injured his leg a little, but I don't think it should be a problem. In any case, he did a great job all weekend, and unfortunately, we weren't able to capitalize on that in the race.”
On the other side of the garage, Ai took full advantage of the situation and climbed back up the field on a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult. He was tenth, then gradually overtook everyone to finish fourth. Another solid race, a great comeback, and a fast pace at the end. He showed what he's capable of. A very good race for Ai.
It's frustrating for Raul, but once again, we've been quite competitive on this circuit. So we can arrive in Brno and try to make up for what we lost here.