It was a tough weekend in the Ignite Pramac Racing Team garage, and it was made even more difficult when Michele Pirro made contact with Yonny Hernandez just after the start and ran wide in turn nine.
The Italian, in his second appearance as a substitute rider for Ben Spies, nonetheless rejoined the race and began the hard work of recovering positions, advancing as high as tenth place with nine laps remaining and maintaining that position to the end.
Pirro, who also serves as the Ducati Test Team rider, will remain at the Circuit de Catalunya tomorrow for an IRTA test, in which he’ll work on extracting maximum performance from the ‘laboratory’ version of the Desmosedici GP13.
Michele Pirro – Ignite Pramac Racing Team
“Unfortunately, in order to avoid Hernandez on the first lap, I was forced to go long in a corner and run off the track. Then I took a long time to get through the gravel because of the anti-spin, and by the time I got back on track, I couldn’t see anyone—I thought maybe the race was finished! At that point, I gave it everything I had to recover as many positions as possible. I tried switching maps to see if it would reduce the pumping, but I wasn’t able to reduce the gap as much as I wanted. I hoped to catch Dovi, but then I realized that the tyre was losing a lot and I had to settle for tenth place. We didn’t change much compared to Mugello, as we didn’t have enough time, but due to the worse pumping and grip we found all this weekend, this is how it went. On one hand I’m happy to have had the opportunity to ride here because we were able to see this bike’s limits, but on the other hand I’m disappointed because I hoped to have a better result. We’ll see how things go in tomorrow’s test, and then at Assen, although I still don’t know which bike I’ll ride.”
Pramc Racing Press Release
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