Ryusei Yamanaka finishes the race in Misano 17th, Filip Salac has to retire after an incident.
The weekend of the San Marino GP was a weekend full of incidents in the tight Moto3 field. While the practice sessions were already interrupted or even stopped several times due to crashes, the race was also filled with numerous incidents.
This was also the case for the riders of the CarXpert PrüstelGP team. Ryusei Yamanaka started the race on 16th position and got away well from the starting grid. The tight field of riders and the highsider of an opposing rider almost became his undoing – the Japanese rider had to avoid the crash and ride a wide line, losing a few places and rejoining the field in 19th position. Throughout the rest of the race, Yamanaka was able to keep his pace consistent before making up another three places at the end to finish the race in 17th place.
On the side of Filip Salac, the race ended rather less pleasantly: the Czech was also involved in the incident of the competitor’s highsider at the beginning of the race. He also managed to avoid a crash – afterwards Salac even improved from 24th to 13th place and showed once again that he is capable of keeping up the pace from the very front. With six laps to go, however, a rider in front of him was suddenly braking quite heavily, Salac was unable to avoid a collision. However, he was again able to avoid the crash, but the bike was too badly damaged to finish the race.
For the team and for both riders, the weekend was once again eventful and above all very informative. Now it is time to recover from the weekend of the San Marino Grand Prix to be fit for the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, which will take place from October 01 to 03.
Ryusei Yamanaka (P17 | 39’35.876)
“The race was dominated by a lot of turbulences. Starting with the crash right at the beginning of the race, in which I had to take wide line and of course was overtaken by a number of riders. Then there were other incidents in which I was lucky several times. The main thing for me today is that I was able to finish the race. Now, after the two back-to-back races, it’s time to recover a bit before heading on to Austin.”
Filip Salac (DNF)
“I was already enormously lucky to avoid the crash at the beginning, in the middle of the tight field of riders. It took me a moment, but I was able to regain my focus and make up a number of places. Then the next incident happened and again almost a crash, when I was in the slipstream of the rider in front of me and he suddenly braked unexpectedly. Again I was able to avoid the crash, but I couldn’t prevent the collision itself. I had to go to the box afterwards, the front of the bike had been too badly affected. It wasn’t the result we had hoped for – but we’re focusing on the next race because, based on the data and on my pace, we know we’re on the right track.”
Florian Prüstel, Teammanager
“The weekend already got off to a difficult start on Friday. Then on Saturday there were further incidents that caused us to lose important practice time. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to create a really good starting position for the race – although Ryusei made it into Q2, which was very pleasing for all of us. In the race, Filip then showed a really strong performance, right up to that unlucky collision after which he had to end the race early. Yamanaka lost a few positions before he was able to improve his pace a bit and ultimately finished in seventeenth place. Not an ideal weekend for us – but we’re looking ahead, packing our boxes today and we’ re excited for Texas.”
Pictures by © [2021] RLekl
