LCR Honda rider Toni Elias finished 13th in the 2011 US Grand Prix – MotoGP news
LCR Honda team rider Toni Elias was 13th to finish the 2011 US Grand Prix held at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca circuit.
The Spanish rider was facing usual problem with his front end. The unresolved issue has hampered him from performing better.
Elias said, “In the morning warm up, we changed the rear set up of the bike and it felt immediately better. As always, I had a good start but on this track you get stuck if you start from the last row, so I pushed but in the first corner I went a bit wide.”
He added on to say that while he was running in the 12th place, he was trying to push even harder, but in the first corner he went wide, ending up in run off gravel and lost all the positions. After merely avoiding a crash, he managed to restart
the race but the front end problem became even worse as he faced some issues with his front suspension.
He added that race was tough and tricky but and finishing on 13th was not a good sign to end the race.
On the other hand was Ben Bostrom who joined Elias as a teammate for the Laguna Seca event. Bostrom is an AMA Superbike racer in the MJM team and the American was called in by the LCR Honda team specifically for this event.
Bostrom said, “I had a good start and immediately felt very comfortable on the bike. I improved my lap time by a second over the practice time, so I was very optimistic to see that so early in the race.”
He added that he was riding fast and that made him a little less confident on the bike. In the first corner, he hit his foot on the ground while down shifting which troubled him. Later he made a slight mistake that forced him to run off the track and in
the gravel.
Despite of running off the track, he rejoined the race and soon in following lap, he faced the same problem and again ran off into the gravel. That was the point where he decided to ride back to the garage and avoid any more incidents.
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