I was 12th at the start of the last lap and by the time I got back to the box I’d been bumped back to 15th which was a bit of a shame to miss the third row but the times were seriously close, just 0.2secs to Locatelli in 11th. I was happy with the bike setup and felt like I had a good rhythm for the race.
Sunday morning was steady as always. Old tyres from qualifying, a full tank of fuel and running in new pistons for 5 laps. I did a couple of laps in the mid 1min 27secs and all felt ok for the race.
As we were the last race of the day there was a lot of hanging around. I feel sorry for all the
MotoGP riders who have to go through that most weekends. I was pretty nervous before the race, the better I qualify and the better I think I can do then the more nervous I get, I hate it but at least I‘m not the only one, Casey is the same!
My start was so-so, I did better ones the day before in practice but we had a new clutch in for race day which didn’t feel great. At the end of the first lap I had passed a couple of riders and was in 15th.
Debon got a flier from something like 20th on the grid and was holding our group up. I was third in the group and then West came by after about 5 laps and I was confident I could hang on to him because our times and consistency in qualifying had been pretty similar.
On lap 6 I passed Debon and began to drop him straight away and was with West and Guintoli in 11th and 12th. I was just lining up Sylvain for a pass because I knew that West might get away and wanted to go with him. At the start of lap 7 I came out of the first corner and the bike started to misfire.
At first I thought it was just a slight splutter from the engine but after I got out of the tight section and tried to open it up. It was misfiring badly and wouldn’t clear out. I did an extra lap just to see if the bike would come good but it didn’t change and I coasted back to the box pretty peed off. Another at least 5 points gone.
