SEPANG, Malaysia: In a display of true fighting spirit, QMMF Racing Team rider Anthony West battled his way from almost last place to finish in the 18th spot in the Moto 2 race of the Malaysian Grand Prix yesterday.
Down to 29th after a hectic first lap, the 33-year-old Australian grit his teeth and started to make up positions despite increasing problems with tyre-grip in the intense afternoon heat on the Sepang Circuit.
On lap six, he passed his team-mate Roman Ramos and took 24th place and by halfway through the race, he entered the top 20. West moved past Belgian top-rider Xavier Simeon into 18th place with four laps to go. But even though he pulled away
from Simeon by more than a second per lap, the next rider in front of West was already too far gone and he had to settle for his position.
“My start was okay, sort of medium, but when I went into the first turn, I got bogged between many other riders and in turn two, there was the crash of Gino Rea, which also slowed me down,” West said.
“I lost a bit of drive and I also lost some more positions on this first lap when I was trying to pass a rider and got pushed wide. Then I had a battle with Ramos for a while. When he passed me on the inside I almost crashed, so it was quite hard to catch up. He was pushing really hard. We were both on the limit with the bike, we were as fast as we could go with the bike. When it gets hot like that, the bike tends to lose grip. We went back to the setting we had yesterday morning, which worked quite well, but in this temperature, there was a noticeable drop of grip. I feel like we struggle more than other bikes with high temperatures. In the first laps, my engine temperature rose to over 100 degrees, so it was a bit slow. When I got in front of the guys and I had some fresh air, the engine cooled down a bit. But it continued to be a difficult race,” West added.
Roman Ramos showed similar determination to leave the tail end of the field behind.
With a better start than West, he gained some positions straight away and was 27th after one lap. He stayed ahead of West on his way to 25th after three and 24th place after four laps and managed to cling to his team-mate until the tenth lap.
In the second half of the race, he also started to suffer from increasing tyre problems, especially in the front. He managed to finish what he called the “toughest race of my life”, but wasn’t able to gain any more positions.
“This would have been the toughest race of my life with a distance! On the first laps, things went quite well, I was able to push and gain a few positions,” Ramos said.
“Later, I lost confidence in the front of the bike because the front folded away under me a few times and I was really close to crashing. In the warm-up session this morning, the bike worked much, much better. I don’t know what happened, it must have been the intense heat on the track. Whatever the reason, I suffered a lot and I didn’t come even close to riding as fast as I did this morning. I was a second slower but there was no way to go faster. The last laps were especially tough and I couldn’t fight for a decent position,” Ramos added.
THE PENINSULA
