Hervé Poncharal regrets for his Tech3 troops that this Qatar Grand Prix did not bring him at least some consolation, after days of testing spent rowing to get out of the back of the peloton. A thrill nevertheless experienced by the official KTM team equipped with the same RC16s, which means that there is still hope for next weekend and a Doha Grand Prix which will take place at the same place. Provided, however, that Danilo Petrucci has not injured a shoulder and that Iker Lecuona tones up his right arm...
Hervé Poncharal returns from this first round of the 2021 season of MotoGP empty-handed. He explains thus: “ it certainly wasn't the ideal weekend for the Tech3 KTM Factory Racing team. We worked hard all week and even though the grid positions weren't what we expected, we were confident enough to improve during the race and score some points with our two drivers, especially with Danilo and that would have been nice for his very first race with KTM ».
Tech3: shoulder pain for Petrucci
Yes, but … " Unfortunately, his race didn't even last one lap. It seems that there was contact with another pilot and it is very sad and very disappointing to start our new adventure like this. But that's part of the race unfortunately. We hope he will pull through as he was complaining a bit of shoulder pain. »
The tricolor then focuses on its second pilot lecuona : " Iker ran a courageous race. Unfortunately, he still has some issues with his right arm, which caused him some slow laps. Otherwise, the speed was there and on quite a few laps, he was as fast as the leaders. So clearly Iker has great potential to ride a MotoGP bike quickly, but we knew that before ».
« Hopefully both of our guys will feel good physically for next week " finished Hervé Poncharal. " Let's wait and see what Miguel and Brad said and meet to think about what we can do to be better next weekend. Although the final positions were not what we hoped for, the situation is much more positive than it seems. Let's keep working, keep pushing and see what happens here at Losail next week ».
MotoGP Qatar 1 J3: classification
Credit rankings: MotoGP.com
