Petronas Sprinta’s Jake Dixon ended the day frustrated after his impressive morning pace failed to translate during the vital qualifying for the Misano Moto2 race, qualifying 17th.
An accomplished performance in the final Free Practice session saw Dixon sitting fifth for the majority of the 40 minutes, on only his second visit to the Rimini Riviera circuit, before securing automatic qualification to the top 14 with his 10th place finish and looking forward to the afternoon’s fight.
Unfortunately, unsuccessful set up changes to his Kalex machine and a spell of track limit breaches left Dixon struggling and with everything to do in the closing stages of Q2.
His fastest lap, a best time of 1’36.911, while not representative of his true pace around the 4.2km long Misano circuit leaves the Brit heading the sixth row for tomorrow’s 25-lap race, after his countrymen, Sam Lowes, forfeits pole position to start from pitlane.
"FP3 was really good, but we went the wrong way with the bike set up in qualifying. It wasn’t great to ride and I’m not happy, as I know we could have done better. It is what it is though and I need to not dwell on it.
“We did some good work in FP2 yesterday with the tyres and then this morning we made another good step; I think we could have done the same again in qualifying. Obviously it didn’t pay off, but tomorrow is a new day and it’s going to be a long race.
“I can’t wait to get stuck in and I’m confident that we can get a good result tomorrow.”
