RiderTua.com – The debut of the Aprilia Trackhouse team at the Qatar GP experienced problems. Before the red light went out, Raul Fernandez (finished 3rd in the warm-up session) suddenly raised his hand, forcing the start to be cancelled. After several arguments with the officials, Raul was then directed to the pitlane. After swapping bikes, the 25 year old rider started from the back of the track, fighting until 17th position, before bringing his RS-GP23 back to the pits and ending the race early.
“Honestly, I’m very frustrated. After a very good warm-up session and a generally very good weekend, we were very competitive. On the grid I had a problem with the electronics. I looked at the lights on the dashboard and something was wrong,” said Raul.
Raul Fernandez: ‘Error Code’ Makes Mess Up
Trackhouse Racing team manager Wilco Zeelenberg explained, “Raul got an ‘error code’ on his dashboard before he started. After 2 or 3 seconds, the bike returned to normal but at that point he had to leave the grid as quickly as possible. Then he had to switch to the second bike because it’s too hard to start with an error code.”
However, Raul Fernandez’s suffering is not over because his spare bike uses used tires. “I had to change to another bike which was already using used tires, and with that (used tires) my race could be said to be almost finished. I tried to finish the race, but the last five laps were very difficult to manage the tires, I couldn’t continue the race and entered the pit,” said rider from Spain.
Meanwhile his teammate Miguel Oliveira slipped from 15th to 19th position after undergoing a long penalty lap, then returned to 15th position and scored 1 point in the second to last lap (20th of 22 laps). The long penalty lap really gave Oliveira a lot of problems… “I had to do long laps at the start of the race when the group of riders was closer together and I just lost time and track position. So, I had to regain some positions while trying to save tyres.” said the rider from Portugal who was equipped with a 2024 spec Aprilia.
Oliveira added, “1 point for the effort, but we are not happy with this weekend. I’m sure we still need more time to get the best results from the bike. I think the team is capable of doing it, we just need time, we need to keep working and give our all the best of us.”
Team manager Davide Brivio said that they left Qatar knowing that his team actually had the potential to race much better than what they had done to date. “Portugal will be a very important race for Miguel. Before that, we will analyze everything that happened here and try to improve it, to be better.”
