Elias back in the points at British GP, Rivas unfit to race after heavy collision in warmup

The morning did not start well for the Blusens Avintia men. With the warm-up time finished, the Moto2 riders stopped on the track to do the usual start trial. Dani Rivas, who did a good practice session, was not able to avoid colliding with Odendaal, Simeon and Torres, causing the fall of all of them. Rivas was more than one minute unconscious and fractured the collarbone, while Odendaal suffered a fracture in the foot. Despite the fact that both are well, Dani was taken to the hospital to be 24 hours under observation as a precaution. Neither Rivas nor Steven were able to race the GP while Simeon and Torres, who did not suffer physical damage, ran the race.

His teammate, Toni Elías finished normally the warm-up in which he tested a new setting that gave him those tenths which were missing to be with the best riders. Toni faced the race from the fourteenth spot of the grid. When the lights went off, Elías started well and completed the first lap in the thirteenth position being in a group that struggled to reach the top ten. Toni, just as it happened in previous races, was not able to be competitive on the first laps and lost the opportunity to finish higher. As the race progressed, the rider from Manresa was closer to the times of the fast riders, but it was too late to compete for more advanced positions. The fifteenth place in which he ended the race allowed him to score a point that, while was positive, was not the desired result.

24 Toni Elías (15th, +28.900): ”We started from a more advanced place than in other races, but I did not have enough speed on the firsts laps. I said yesterday that if I found a solution to be faster at the beginning of the race, we could do a good GP but it has not been possible. I have kept, more or less, my start position but that was not the goal. During the race I have had the pace I had yesterday in the practice sessions and we knew that it was not enough to be where we wanted. We had to find something else and we have not succeeded. Now I am a bit disappointed and that point is not enough but we will continue working to improve”.

Source: Avintia Racing