Jake Dixon will line his Petronas SRT up on the eighth row ahead of the Dutch GP at Assen tomorrow after a difficult Saturday left the Brit in 22nd.
After a promising start to Friday, Dixon found that the much needed improvements weren’t as forthcoming as he had hoped on Saturday morning, with yellow flags hindering his progress further in the closing stages. His 1’37.120 was only enough for 17th by the end of FP3 and he was forced to prepare for the Q1 fight.
An early marker in the opening qualifying gave the Brit a similar pace to his morning best, a 1’37.171 but he was ultimately unable to improve, completing the day in 22nd and two places higher than his teammate, Xavi Vierge.
“The weekend started really well, but we seem to have hit a wall with the feeling of the bike,” Dixon explained as qualifying concluded.
“We seem to be able to do the same lap time consistently, but I wasn’t able to improve it. We’ve still been working on the base setup though and it might not be the result that we need or want but, looking at the bigger picture, it is setting us up nicely to go over everything in the summer break and come back stronger in Austria.
“Having the long lap penalty tomorrow will make things difficult, but I’ll be giving my best. We think we’ve found something that will improve my speed, so I think we’ll still have a good race tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.”
