The second appointment with the CIV took place in the circuit of Misano under an unpredictable sky. Sun, heat, mugginess but also strong thunderstorms and hail made themselves felt hard during the long weekend dedicated to Italian.
Thursday is a day of free practice and testing for our Massimo, who immediately tries to get in tune with his bike and accumulate the right energy to finish the second round in the best way. The team focused mainly on the set up of the bike to reach the optimal race pace and to be able to lead the qualifying session in the leading group.
Friday marks the official start of the race weekend with technical and sporting checks. During the morning free practice we continue to work on the race pace and in the last minutes Massimo pushes to find the limit of the bike. The first qualifying is quite troubled after a strong summer storm has made the track conditions not optimal, but after an important change on the clutch set up it was still essential to enter and not lose the opportunity to test the bike. The day ended with a twelfth place on the grid.
After the tests and free practice of the past few days, the last qualifying takes place on Saturday, the definitive one that leads Massimo to line up in twelfth position on the starting grid due to the traffic created on the track during the second qualifying.
Between Q2 and Race 1 the team had time to analyze the data and make changes on the bike, allowing Massimo to improve the lap time he set in qualifying. The improvements led to a very good race pace even if starting from 12th position proved to be a strong obstacle, in fact, despite the excellent start and the recovery of six positions, only in the first lap Massimo was missing a couple of tenths to enter the leading group. The first race of the weekend ends with Massimo in fourth position.
RACE 1
- Bussolotti
- Valtulini
- Bernardi
- Roccoli
Sunday at the CIV begins with a warm-up in the morning, during which modifications are tried to improve the race pace, but they do not bring the desired results, so the entry into the race is with another solution that has proved very effective. The start is not one of the best because due to the absence of a driver Massimo is lined up in the middle of the grid and finds two drivers in front of him who close the way. Finally, on lap five, Massimo managed to catch up with the leading group and recover at the braking of the cart, three corners from the end. A couple more laps would have helped Massimo to try and reach the podium.
Despite the results of the race weekend that were below the team’s expectations the team is positive as compared to race1 the bike was faster and this means that the direction to have a better performing bike for the Imola round is close.
RACE 2
- Bernardi
- Valtulini
- Bussolotti
- Stirpe
- Roccoli
Massimo Roccoli’s words: “Two races conditioned by a difficult qualifying, starting from the twelfth position is never easy. In race 1 I started well and I had a good race pace, too bad for two mistakes that affected the comeback solo and the chance to fight for the podium, even if I got very close. In race 2 the start was not the best, struggling a bit in the first laps. I had a very good pace, also improving compared to race 1. The team worked to try to give me a bike as competitive as possible, but unfortunately starting back I could not bring home more than a 4 and 5 place. I thank all my sponsors and supporters.”
