Bendsneyder and Corsi just outside the points
Bo Bendsneyder and Simone Corsi had the points in sight in the Moto2 race of the Grand Prix of San Marino & Riviera di Rimini, but they just didn’t manage to grab them. Bendsneyder was the closest to it in seventeenth place at the finish line of the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli. Corsi fell back in the final phase from sixteenth to nineteenth place.
Both riders of NTS RW Racing GP fought a fierce battle in a group of about ten. Corsi in particular did good business in this bunch. Started from position 22, he quickly advanced to seventeenth. After a good start, Bendsneyder needed a little more time to come forward and was stuck in 19th place for a while. Due to a crash of Tetsuta Nagashima in the fifteenth lap, they both moved up a place and it seemed that it would stay that way for a long time. A few laps before the end, however, Corsi lost power due to a problem with the exhaust, causing him to fall back to nineteenth and Bendsneyder moved to place 17.
“We want to grab points, so we can’t be satisfied with the result, but it wasn’t a race to be dissatisfied with either,” said NTS RW Racing GP team manager Jarno Janssen. “Bo had a reasonable start and fought back well. The pace was very high and in this field a few minor mistakes are immediately punished. Simone has had a good race, certainly considering that it was his first one on this machine. We have to pick out the positive points and build on that next week in Aragon.”
Bo Bendsneyder (17 at 32.104): “Of course I am not satisfied with the final result, but it was not a bad race. Certainly the final phase was strong. I made two mistakes, one in the beginning and one in the middle, when I wanted to overtake another rider and ran wide. Fortunately, I was able to make up for that, but to be able to go for points in this competitive field, you cannot afford mistakes like that. What has become clear this weekend is that in the second free practice I have to take bigger steps to be in a better position the rest of the weekend. That has proved to be the crucial point here. I also learned from Corsi. He has a very different riding style than me, but we can use information from there to see what I can do differently and better.”
Simone Corsi (19 at 34.048): “The start was good. I was able to overtake a handful of riders immediately. In the final phase I had to deal with chatter and I couldn’t keep up with the pace. Very unfortunate, because this was not the result we had all hoped for. I want to thank NTS RW Racing GP for this opportunity and I hope that next time we can try a few new solutions that might make things better.”