Today's race in Mugello ended the three back-to-back races of the World Championship, seeing the two JiR Team riders Zarco and Granado finish respectively in 10th and 21st place.
The Frenchman started from 18th place on the grid after being penalized 15 places on the grid from his original qualifying position of third. The penalty was awarded for yesterday's collision in free practice with Pol Espargarao. Initially, Johann struggled to find the right level of aggression from the very beginning of the race. Once he found the right pace he managed to make a spirited fight-back, catching 10th place with a 13-second gap from the winner and scoring the ninth best time in the race.
Eric Granado managed to have a good start from his 32nd place in the grid and to recover some good positions, but then couldn't keep the pace of his direct competitors suffering the hot temperature and the technicity of the Italian circuit.
The GP of Italy was won by Iannone, followed by Espargaro and Luthi. Now the Moto2 World Championship will take a long break till August 19th for the GP of Indianapolis, as the GP of USA in Laguna Seca will be raced by the only MotoGP class as usual.
Gianluca Montiron – Team Principal
"After the good performance of Johann in qualifying we knew that this would have been a hard race due to the 15 position-penalty we were awarded. It is remarkable that in practice three new generations of riders got the top positions, this confirms that the youth project we're bringing on with Johann is going in the right direction. The race, we all know, is another business and has been completed with the intent of willing to gradually but constantly improve, this is why I believe this has been a positive weekend, now we have to verify which kind of problem affected our engine as we found a lot of oil in the airbox after the race, which could be a worrying issue for the next race. Mugello is a technical and demanding track, for this reason we had some testing sessions with Granado to prepare him for this race. His lap time hasn't improved from practice to race, this is useful as an experience to him considering his young age but we are expecting him to be faster to adapt to different conditions, as we have already run a lot of kilometers so far. I will exploit this summer break to think about how to proceed with our project."
Johann Zarco
"Tenth place is pretty good, I ended only 13-seconds from the winner and this means my pace was good, I'm a little disappointed for the end because I was fighting with Corti, Kallio and Krummenacher but I could fight with all of them, Corti ended ahead of me. I started a little cautious because I didn't want to take unjustified risks and maybe touch with someone, this made me lose some positions, then I managed to find a good pace, but each time I passed someone then I was overtaken again on the straight. I struggled with this, I don't want to use this as an excuse but maybe if I didn't lose that time on the straight I could have been in the pack with Nakagami and Marquez. In any case our first objective for today was to end the race and get some points, we did this and this makes me happy, considering the Championship we still can reach the 7th place and for the moment this is my objective."
Eric Granado
"I made a very good start, maybe my best so far, that let me pass many riders. In early laps I managed to be more aggressive to hold my position, but then the others raised their pace and I struggled more, I tried to push and give my best but in these hard conditions it was really difficult. Now I get back to Brazil where I will train more and more in order to get well prepared to the second part of the season: that will be very important. I did already four races gaining experience, now it's time to make some steps forward, I need to thank my team that is giving me an extraordinary amount of support for my growth in this class."
JiR Moto2 Press Release
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