Tony Arbolino was 6th in a tight Q2 session at the Sachsenring on Saturday, and is confident of being in the podium fight in Sunday’s race.

• After cool conditions on Friday, there were signs of the German summer emerging on Saturday at the historic Sachsenring circuit next to Chemnitz. Ambient temperatures stood at 29 degrees and riders had to contend with strong winds throughout qualifying.
• Tony Arbolino is the sole Elf Marc VDS Racing Team rider this weekend after team-mate Filip Salac was declared unfit on Friday morning as he has not yet recovered 100% from his Assen crash.

/// TONY ARBOLINO,  6^th – 1’23.037 – +0.259s

• After experimenting with set-up changes on Friday, Tony and his crew decided to revert to his base setting for Saturday morning. He immediately looked comfortable in the P2 session, when he set the 5^th fastest time, just 0.152s off the top.
• The 23-year old then came out swinging in Q2. Tony posted his fastest time on his 2^nd lap, which was good enough for provisional pole up until 5 minutes to go. He was eventually pushed back to 6^th, but this was first time Tony has qualified as high as the second row since Round 1 in Qatar.

“I’m pretty confident in our chances of scoring a good result.”

“A good day! We’ve been close to the front all weekend and in every session, which means we’re doing a good job. We worked from the same set-up more or less throughout today so I’m feeling quite confident. Now it’s time to focus on tomorrow’s race. For sure starting well and fighting hard in the first two laps will be key. We need to be ready for the amazing war we’ll fight tomorrow! Let’s see what the pace will be of the leaders but ours is strong so I’m pretty confident in our chances of scoring a good result.”