Scott Redding saw his lead in the FIM Moto2 World Championship cut by seven points, after severe tyre issues saw him struggle to a seventh place finish in today’s German Moto2 Grand Prix at the Sachsenring.
Mika Kallio showed strongly at the start of today’s 29-lap race, but slipped down the order to eventually finish 13th, after experiencing the same tyre problems as his Marc VDS teammate.
Redding got a good start from eighth position on the grid, but was unable to make contact with the leading group as rear grip dropped off sharply in the early stages of the race. Despite a rapidly deteriorating rear tyre, the 20-year-old Briton was initially involved in the battle for fourth place, but dropped back when the tyre started tearing at the midpoint of the race and eventually finished seventh.
For Kallio the tyre issues started almost immediately, as he experienced a severe drop off in rear grip from lap six onwards. The 30-year-old Finn managed to hold on to fifth place for two more laps, before rapidly dropping down the order as the rear tyre continued to deteriorate, to eventually finish a disappointing 13th.
Scott Redding #45: 7th
“What can I say; from the lap two or three I was struggling with rear grip from the left hand side of the tyre. In the right-handers and through the first sector I was catching hand over fist, but when it came to the left-hand corners I had virtually no edge grip on entry or exit. From halfway onwards the tyre started to tear, which reduced grip even further and also caused pretty bad chatter. I was disappointed not to finish in front of Lüthi and De Angelis, because with Pol only third here today, a fifth place finish would have seen me go into the summer break with more than a 25 point lead in the championship standings. I need to come back strong in Indianapolis, to start the second half of the season in the same way I started the first half.”
Mika Kallio #36: 13th
“It’s difficult to understand the tyre problem we had today. In practice yesterday I completed two race distance runs of 27 or 28 laps on the same tyre, with the same settings in the bike, in almost identical conditions and there was no problem. Today, after just six laps, the rear grip dropped off massively while I was running fifth and I couldn’t maintain the lap time. As the race progressed and the rear continued to deteriorate it started inducing chatter, which was causing a lot of problems on corner entry. I’m really disappointed, as I thought we’d done everything right this weekend, but today was a disaster.”
Marc VDS Racing Team Press Release
