Missed opportunity for Gajser in qualifying at Pangkal Pinang

Team HRC’s Tim Gajser was sixth at the end of today’s qualifying race at Pangkal Pinang, the home of the MXGP of Indonesia, which was held in hot and sunny weather conditions, which had allowed the track to dry up fully before the start of the moto. His team mate Todd Waters finished the encounter in 18^th position.

After a decent start and some back-and-forth action with his closest rivals, Gajser moved up to fourth place after passing Desalle on lap two, immediately pulling a gap on his French opponent and Toni Cairoli, who went off track the lap before and had to give up a few places. When Coldenhoff crashed out of second place, Gajser found himself in close pursuit of Paulin and, with a clean manoeuvre, he passed him on lap seven for second.

The effort made in trying to find a good alternative line to overtake his rival cost Gajser a lot of momentum, however, and the Slovenian rider then found himself back in seventh position as his pace dropped away. But with Anstie crashing ahead of him in the final stages of the moto, he was promoted to sixth before the finish line.

Todd Waters did not enjoy the best jump of the gate but was able to make his way up to eleventh and stay up there in the first few laps of the moto. The 27-year-old Australian rider, who is still working hard to find good racing form – this is only his third round of the year – began losing some ground from the top-ten as the laps went by and was eventually 18th at the chequered flag.

The MXGP field will get back on track tomorrow morning at 10:45 for the warm up session, which will be followed by the two motos of the MXGP of Indonesia at 13:15 and 16:10 local time (GMT +7).