Jake Dixon: 'Awesome' to have another chance at Aragon

Jake Dixon confident he can close the gap to the MotoGP frontrunners during his second Petronas Yamaha apearance, at Aragon this weekend.

Peter McLaren

07 Sep 2021

Jake Dixon, British MotoGP, 28 August 2021
© Gold and Goose

Jake Dixon gets an 'awesome' second chance to ride Franco Morbidelli's Petronas Yamaha this weekend, where he will seek to continue closing the gap at an Aragon circuit where he claimed his best Moto2 result.

Dropped into MotoGP as part of the Yamaha reshuffle following Maverick Vinales' exit, Dixon delivered a solid debut in his home Silverstone round, peaking at +1.6s from the top in warm-up.

Unfortunately, Dixon's hopes of staying with the back of the MotoGP regulars in the race was ruined by a major loss of tyre grip, which also caused his team-mate Valentino Rossi to plummet from 6th to 18th.

Dixon crossed the line 20-seconds behind the Italian legend in a distant last, although his +51s margin to race winner Fabio Quartararo was at least slightly better than fellow rookie substitute Garrett Gerloff when riding the same 2019-spec bike at Assen earlier this year.

Nonetheless, with the second satellite Yamaha seat (alongside Andrea Dovizioso) still up for grabs in 2022, Dixon will be out to impress by closing that race gap considerably this weekend.

"I’m really looking forward to Aragon this weekend and to have another chance to ride the Yamaha YZR-M1 again is just awesome," Dixon said. "It has made me really happy. I want to thank the team for giving me the opportunity to ride the bike again and to see what I can do.

"I want to see how I can improve throughout the weekend again and try to close that gap to the front guys. Obviously, they are the best in the world but I have a great team around me and I think it’s possible.

"I feel like I’m working well with the bike and I think we’ll take another step closer towards the front this weekend."

Dixon, thought to be in a head-to-head with Moto3 team-mate Darryn Binder for the 2022 MotoGP seat at the reborn SRT squad, took his best Moto2 finish of fourth place at Aragon last season.

Following Aragon, Dovizioso is expected to join Rossi from the following Misano round, with Morbidelli being moved up to the Factory Yamaha team in place of Vinales.