Remy Gardner finishes seventh at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, on a difficult day for his teammate, Raul Fernandez, who crashes out late on.

Red Bull KTM Ajo Moto2 concluded a challenging weekend at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli on Sunday, with the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix race. Remy Gardner was seventh, having to deal with various issues in addition to serving a long lap penalty in the final part of the contest. Raul Fernandez made a fantastic fightback and chased down the leader, but crashed out on Lap 16 when in second place.

Gardner, who started from the fifth row of the grid, pushed to the fullest when the lights went out. Despite small issues that the Australian rider experienced during the race, he made a steady series of passes until he reached the seventh place. On Lap 17, due to an incident with another rider, the Red Bull KTM Ajo Moto2 talent had to complete a long lap that took him away from the frontrunners. Gardner finished the contest in seventh position, picking up some important points.

The race started well for Fernandez, who has managed to climb from ninth position on the grid to seventh on the opening lap. The Spaniard began to set a very strong pace, shaking off his rivals without much difficulty and, at the start of Lap 6, moved into second place. He did his best to hunt down the leader and succeeded, even going on to pass him. Unfortunately, Fernandez crashed in Turn 8 on Lap 16 when running in second position, thus ending his contest prematurely.

Gardner continues to lead the Moto2 World Championship with 280 points. Fernandez is second with 262. The Red Bull KTM Ajo Moto2 duo will return in two weeks for the Algarve Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the season, on November 5th-7th.

Results (Moto2 Race)
1. Sam Lowes (Kalex) 40:25.180
2. Augusto Fernandez (Kalex) +1.233
3. Aron Canet (Boscoscuro) +1.400
4. Celestino Vietti (Kalex) +2.554
5. Jorge Navarro (Boscoscuro) +4.243
7. Remy Gardner (Red Bull KTM Ajo) +14.261
DNF. Raul Fernandez (Red Bull KTM Ajo)

Moto2 World Championship Standing 2021
1. Remy Gardner (Red Bull KTM Ajo) 280 points
2. Raul Fernandez (Red Bull KTM Ajo) 262 points
3. Marco Bezzecchi (Kalex) 206 points
4. Sam Lowes (Kalex) 165 points
5. Augusto Fernandez (Kalex) 151 points

Moto2 World Championship Team Standing 2021
1. Red Bull KTM Ajo 542 points
2. Elf Marc VDS Racing Team 316 points
3. Sky Racing Team VR46 272 points
4. Aspar Team Moto2 168 points
5. Idemitsu Honda Team Asia 157 points

AKI AJO – TEAM MANAGER

“It was a tough weekend, especially due to the weather conditions. In qualifying we had issues with front tyre temperature, like other teams surely did as well. Because of this, our starting positions in today’s race were not very good. In any case, Raul [Fernandez] had a great start and reached the front with the chance to fight for the win. We are disappointed with what happened. Nevertheless, he has shown great progress throughout the season and this kind of misfortune can happen. He has to forget about this round and focus on the next two rounds, to finish the year in the best possible way. Remy [Gardner] had a difficult Sunday, beginning from so far back. In addition, he was given a long lap penalty in the contest, which didn’t help him. All in all, he managed to score some important points and now he has to focus on the remainder of the campaign.”

87 REMY GARDNER

“It has been a weekend with many ups and downs. In the end, we were lucky and we have taken some important points. However, we cannot afford to have more rounds like this if we want to fight for the championship. We decided on our tyre following the choice made by the rest of the grid, but unfortunately it didn’t work out so well for us and I was left behind in the group. In addition, we had an incident with another rider and we had to serve a long lap penalty. I’m sorry about what happened. From there I tried to fight back as fast as I could, and finally we finished seventh.”

25 RAUL FERNANDEZ

“I want to apologise to the team for the crash. I wanted to win the race and I was not thinking about the championship. It was a strange incident, as I was very calm on the bike and I did not make any strange movements. I can’t quite understand what might have happened, so we will analyse it and make a note of it for the next round. Luckily, we still have two more chances to fight for good results before the end of the season.”