On a wet day in England, Tony Arbolino successfully came through Q1 to take an excellent fourth in Moto2 qualifying while Sam Lowes was ninth.

• The arrival of Storm Antoni meant all of Saturday’s Moto2 running was held in cold, wet conditions at the Silverstone Circuit for the British Grand Prix.
• Both Elf Marc VDS Racing Team riders experienced teeming rain during Saturday morning’s P3. The rain thankfully subsided in time for qualifying, meaning the track wasn’t as wet for Q1 and Q2 in the afternoon.

/// SAM LOWES, 9^th – 2’18.686

• After finding solutions to his dry set-up on Friday afternoon, Sam used P3 to get up to speed with his wet settings and ended the morning with the 3^rd fastest time.
• In qualifying, the 32-year old encountered numerous yellow flags which led to three of his laps being cancelled. Ultimately, Sam’s set-up didn’t work so well with less water on the track, but he still posted a lap good enough for 9^th.

“It’ll be an intense one, when pushing until the last lap will be important”

“I just missed the feeling a bit on a drying track. We did a good job this morning and didn’t change the bike so much for qualifying. Obviously, it wasn’t dry, but there was a lot less water on track than P3. The bike reacted differently to what I thought, and I couldn’t put a nice lap together. Also, we had a lot of yellow flags in 15 minutes so we didn’t get many chances to set a time. Unfortunately, we didn’t do our best lap but starting from the third row we can make a good start tomorrow and fight for something important. We don’t know what the weather will do, but I think it’ll be dry. It’s a 17-lap race and I expect the tyres to last well, so we’ll have to push hard every lap. It could be a strange race, as no one has had much dry set-up time. It’ll be an intense one, when pushing until the last lap will be important. Our pace on used tyres was pretty good yesterday so let’s get in the mix and try to come strong at the end.”

/// TONY ARBOLINO, 4^th – 2’17.880

• Due to finishing 15^th at the end of combined Practice, Tony took part in Q1 for the first time this year. Despite suffering a crash at Turn 16 mid-session, the 23-year old returned to the track to finish first by 1.099s.
• A small change to his wet setting for Q2 didn’t quite bring the expected results. But Tony managed to secure 4th on his fifth lap of the session to finish 0.9s off pole sitter Pedro Acosta.

“I was braking too hard and the grip wasn’t there”

“Honestly, today was difficult to manage. But mentally I’m always ready to deal with every condition that comes my way. I had a small crash because the conditions in Q1 were different to P3. I was braking too hard and the grip wasn’t there. I tried to get some confidence from the bike but it wasn’t giving it back to me. Anyway, we made a small change from Q1 to Q2 and the setting was worse but we understand what happened. I’m just proud of my crew because they believe a lot in what they’re doing, which is so important. Sunday is another day. The conditions will be different so we’re already focussing on that.”