Dylan Ferrandis of the Monster Energy Kawasaki MX2 Racing Team raced to second place in the British round of the FIM World MXGP Motocross Championship at Matterley Basin in southern England.
The Frenchman posted top three times in each of the practice sessions and was only narrowly defeated in the qualification race to give confidence for the GP motos, but in each moto his main rival and championship leader was able to establish a significant lead before Dylan could take over second place so it was not possible to battle for the victory as had been anticipated.
However the two second places have enable the Frenchman to advance to sixth place in the championship standings with every chance to move to fourth in the upcoming rounds despite having missed four rounds earlier in the season.
“It was great to be back on the podium as I missed it at the last two GPs,” said Ferrandis. “I had a good feeling with the track this weekend – here it was possible to make the difference with the other riders. It’s just a shame that my starts were not better as I would like to race with Jeffrey – in both races the gap to him was too great by the time I came to second. We came here after some testing sessions with the team, working mainly on the suspension; on Saturday we made some more changes on the settings, and today the bike was great.”
Team-mate Petar Petrov had also shown good speed in the qualification race as he battled with the championship leader all race to finish seventh but various issues restricted his scoring on race day to a single ninth place in race one before he was forced to withdraw from racing after just a single lap of race two. Petar is ninth in the series standings but is now fully fit again and is optimistic that he will be able to move back up the championship in the coming rounds.
“It was bad weekend, not so much to say as we had some technical issues,” aired Petrov. “I had my best Saturday for some time to qualify in seventh position after fighting with Jeffrey [Herlings] for most of the race. Today in the first moto we had some small issues but I was able to finish the race, but in the second one I had a bad start and was forced to retire on the second lap. Again I had the speed, but that’s also racing and now we don’t think anymore about the championship but just try to do well in each GP.”
