Team Federal Oil Gresini Moto2 rider Xavier Siméon rode to a fantastic second place finish in today’s Grand Prix of Argentina, third round of the 2014 Moto2 World Championship. The Belgian rider, who started the race from the third position on the grid, immediately jumped into second place, behind Esteve Rabat, and managed to maintain that position for all the 23 laps of the race
After a third place finish last year at Le Mans, this second place represents Siméon’s best result ever in Moto2 to date: a performance that redeems the first two unlucky races of the season, where Xavier and the team had already shown great potential.
Aboard the Team Gresini Moto2 Suter, Lorenzo Baldassarri completed his first Moto2 race, although the young rookie - after a good first half of the race - slipped back in 28th position as a result of an oil leak from the engine ending up on his right foot, forcing him to make several mistakes.
Xavier Simeon (2nd)
“I had a good start, maybe the best ever, then I could make my own rhythm and I tried to follow Rabat, even if he was slightly faster than me. In the early stages of the race with the full tank, however, I didn’t want to stress too much the front tyre because I didn’t know if it would be good for the whole race. Anyway, I managed to maintain the second place also when Salom was close to me, then I was able to open a good gap of about 3 seconds. At that point I knew it would not have been possible to reach Rabat, so I managed to keep the concentration and brought home the result. I want to thank the team because he’s doing a great job; we could already be on the podium at Austin, but there I did a mistake, but finally here we had that bit of luck that we missed in the first two races. I am very happy, now we want to continue like this”.
Lorenzo Baldassarri (28th)
“This morning, after the warm up, we made a change to the bike set-up for which has not been positive, because already in the first few laps of the race the rear tyre was sliding a lot. In addition, I got off the line at the start really bad, and after that, trying to recover, I went wide three or four times, due to an engine oil leak that made me slip my right foot from the footpeg and from the rear brake lever. Everytime I lost a lot of time to get back on track, because it was very dirty off the line. I then went wide another last time, at the first corner, and at that point my race was basically over. I tried my best to the end, but I was really too far from the points”.
Federal Oil Gresini Press Release
