Fastest Fernandez fights back to seventh in Spain

In front of a passionate Spanish crowd, Team HRC’s Ruben Fernandez put on a charge in the qualification race to get back to seventh, showing superb speed and giving himself a lot of confidence as he heads into tomorrow’s GP-scoring motos.

The practice sessions didn’t quite go to plan as the #70 wasn’t able to adapt to the rutted Arroyomolinos track, posting times which were in 16^th and 11^th positions after free and timed practice. This wasn’t ideal, but with the start-gate being a bit more open, it wasn’t so imperative to be on the inside and the Spanish rider showed that as the gate-dropped. Due to an injured rider, the qualification race was restarted when Ruben was sitting in fourth place, but after the second gate-drop he made his way into the top three by the time they rounded the first lap and was actually putting pressure on the leaders. However, as he was looking to pass into second, he got caught out just after the pitlane and crashed.

With the race still in the early stages, a lot of riders were able to get past and by the time he remounted, he was down in 15^th place. Knowing that he had the support of this partisan crowd, he quickly started putting in impressive laptimes and making consistent passes every lap. As the qualification race counts for points this year, every position was important and with the clock ticking down, the Honda CRF450R rider’s laptimes also decreased, setting the fastest lap of the race on the penultimate lap as he passed the eighth-placed rider. This gave him four valuable points in the championship standings, closing the gap to the rider in front to just 16.

Seventh gate-pick also gives him a good chance in the races tomorrow to challenge with the top guys and fight it out for what would be his second podium of the season. It would also delight this Spanish crowd which should be even bigger, louder and more passionate for the two motos which will decide the sixth GP overall of the season.