ARENAS EIGHTH AT THE LINE AT BURIRAM
The final day of the Thai Grand Prix had one surprise in store, with the weather dramatically changing the scenario for the riders ahead of the race. The grey sky is menacing, and a few drops fall before the start of the race, which still is declared dry. Albert Arenas lines up on the sixth place of the grid and he is eighth at the end of lap one, before making his way into the top five. He struggled a bit more in the second half of the encounter, losing a couple of places to eventually finish eighth as the race was red flagged due to rain.
Behind him, his teammate Manuel Gonzalez: from tenth on the grid, he had a great start and was running in the front group, but to avoid a contact, he was forced to run wide. He rejoined in fourteenth position, ready to give it all. His pace is strong and consistent as he managed to bounce back to ninth at the end of the encounter. By scoring seven points today, he managed to move up one position in the championship standings, with the top three only 9 points away.
8th – ALBERT ARENAS #75 (14th in the championship standings with 76 points)
“A weekend we were able to wrap up with a strong race. We changed our strategy by focusing more on the riding and on the electronics, making a step to understand what we needed in order to improve. We saw our potential and now, if we want to make some more progress, we need to change the way our work approach, be braver: we want more than a top eight finish. I’ll still happy for the team, we deserved a competitive race with some overtakes. Obviously, I won’t settle for eighth, but we now have more information and we’ll try to make most of it for the final two rounds of the season.”
9th – MANUEL GONZALEZ #18 (5th in the championship standings with 170 points)
“A very chaotic race for me: on lap one, another rider almost made me crash and I lost several positions. Then, during the comeback, there were other coming together situations. Aside all of this, I can say that I felt really good with the bike as I did a comeback with some overtakes and a good rhythm: had we started closer to the front, we may have battled for podium positions. This didn’t happen, but we still take a lot of positives ahead of Malaysia, which will surely be a great weekend for us!”