Xavi Vierge collects his first top six finish of the season in front of his home crowd while Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS team-mate Alex Márquez has been unluckily affected by an early collision.

• Sunday’s Moto2 race, which was the 100th motorcycle Grand Prix race to be held at the Circuito de Jerez, was held in fantastic conditions with track temperatures of 40 degrees.
• The 23-lap race was red flagged after just one corner of action. The luckless Alex Márquez was unable to avoid Remy Gardner, who crashed on the exit of Turn One. Indonesian rider Dimas Ekky Pratama was also involved in the incident.
• The race was re-started over 15 laps, with both sides of the Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS garage doing a fantastic job to fix Marquez’s severely damaged machine.

Alex Márquez: 24th, +32.311 s.

• Alex Márquez showed enormous potential during the weekend, qualifying second and ending the morning warm-up session, finishing in first.
• After colliding with Gardner in the original race,and despite the amazing job done by the Team to fix the bike, Alex had to start race two from pit lane, meaning he lost 13 seconds on the first lap.
• Márquez finished in 24th and slips to sixth in the World Championship, 39 points behind leader Baldassarri.
• Márquez suffered a small opening to the bone in the middle of the index finger on his left hand, as well as an abrasion on his left elbow. These injuries will be treated with physiotherapy and night time inmobilisation.

“We deserved much more after such a good weekend”

“I’m sad for the result. I think we deserved much more after such a good weekend. In the warm-up I was really fast but I had bad luck. It’s racing and sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes these things happen to you, sometimes to other riders. Every lap in every session with this bike we are going faster. I’m happy for that but sad for the result but we need to keep going. The team did an amazing job to repair the bike and because of that I finished the race, for them and the fans. Now we have a test on Tuesday. I think we’re on the right track. I have some pain. It’s an injury but it’s small. It’s more psychological pain. Physically I’m quite OK.”

Xavi Vierge: 6th, +4.995 s.

• Having made changes to his Kalex chassis, Vierge qualified twelfth, he began the re-started race brilliantly, taking seven positions on the first lap to sit fourth and in the fight for the lead.
• On lap three he dropped to fifth, when Jorge Navarro passed him. Brad Binder then demoted him to sixth on lap seven. But the 22-year old remained conistent to achieve his best result of 2019.
• Vierge showed an excellent progression through the weekend and scored 10 important points for his World Championship. 

“It’s not the result that we were expecting but I am satisfied”

“I’m happy to finish that race in sixth position. It’s not the result that we were expecting, but anyway, after a difficult start to the season, I am satisfied with it. We arrived at Jerez, which is a difficult track for me, and from the first moment we worked so hard, focussed on the race. But I struggled a lot. We are making steps and it was really good. Today we can see the step forward. I did a good start and I was there, fighting for first position. But lap-by-lap I started to lose a little bit. We knew that it would be difficult. It was important to stay on the bike and finish to check the points that we need to improve.”

Joan Olivé, Team Manager

“This shows the spirit of this team and how committed we all are in this garage”

“Today unfortunately we didn’t have the Sunday that we would have liked with Alex because one rider crashed in front of him and he could do nothing to avoid it. On the other hand I have to say thank you to the team for the work they did to repair the bike and get Alex back on track again in such a short amount of time. This shows the spirit of this team and how committed we all are in this garage. He could finish the race and this is positive. At Le Mans he will be able to do more. With Xavi our target after Friday was to finish the race first of all after the last two races we had without points. And he did it more than well. Now we are focussed on Le Mans. He likes that track and for sure we’ll have a good weekend there.”