Day One: Practice and Qualifying Recap
Social Media Race Report (by Aeziah)
“Yesterday was day one of my first season in Spain!😁 I’m really excited to be here and cannot believe we finally made it 🙌🏽
Since the Moto5 class is so big, it was split for practice and qualifying. I ran in Group B.
Some last minute work on the bike in the morning resulted in me missing FP1, and as I was leaving pits for FP2, my bike was pulled aside due to something not sounding quite right. Unfortunately this meant I missed both of the first two sessions while the officials at MIR Racing Cup worked on finding and resolving the problem.
FP3 was my first ever practice at Kotar Circuit. I spent the session trying to learn the track and get a good feel for my new bike.
During the last lap, I got on the throttle a little too early in one corner which caused the rear to spin round on me. I was fine but the bike tumbled which bent my front rim and broke a few bits off my bike. Thankfully my team and the race officials managed to get everything sorted in time for me to make the final practice.
FP4 was a good session and I started to find a good pace. I had some really strong laps until my chain came off the front sprocket, likely from my earlier crash.
By qualifying I felt really comfortable on the bike and was able to stick with some of the faster riders for a few laps. On one of the laps I hit an inside curb which sat me up and pushed me off track. I kept the bike upright but this unsettled my bars which meant I rode a lap or so with them pushed forward until I could get back to pit lane to quickly sort them (thanks to M4 Karting Minimoto days this wasn’t impossible for me 🤣).
Q1 and Q2 I finished P11 with a best time of 1:15.116 (4 seconds off the leader’s pace).
The groups will were merged and I started P23 of 26 on the grid. 💪🏽🏁”