Le Mans, France: In difficult conditions with cool temperatures and a partly damp track, QMMF Racing Team rider Anthony West battled bravely to ninth place at the French Grand Prix.
Despite a lack of tyre grip and feeling for the limit of his bike, the 31-year-old from Australia moved up from eleventh place after one lap to take ninth place on lap seven, defending and re-gaining this position time and time again against a fiercely attacking group of opponents.
“My first lap was quite fast, so I was feeling good and was on a strong way. But then I faded and went back and back. I couldn’t stay with the front group, mainly because it felt as if I didn’t have any grip. I don’t want to just blame the bike because it sounds as if I’m making excuses, but I am having a really hard time with it at the moment. I don’t feel that I was on the pace at all and it was a real struggle to ride the bike. I just held off the guys behind me as much as I could,” said West.
“The good part was that I was strong on the brakes, which made it hard for the others to pass. And if they passed, I fought back. But I had to take big risks. It’s frustrating, because last year everything was going so well with the bike, it felt like we made big improvements each race. Now it seems that at a certain point we were going the wrong direction.
“We’ve got a new chassis with another big change to try in Mugello and we really hope that this will work, because otherwise we might have to go back to what we had last year and re-start in order to find out where we went wrong. Our new bike has many good points, but there are other points that make it harder to ride at the same time!”
Team-mate Rafid Topan Sucipto suffered an early setback when he was involved in a crash of another rider in the opening lap.
But the teenager from Jakarta grit his teeth and continued a lonely race, which awarded him with an eventual 24th place.
“I had a good start and I was in quite a strong position when another rider had a big crash in the fourth corner, which forced me off the track and caused me to crash as well.. The bike was okay and I was able to continue, but of course I was dead-last and it cost me to find my rhythm again. It was a lonely race but at least I made it to the chequered flag,” Sucipto said.
The Peninsula
