DNF for unlucky Elias at Le Mans

With the track still damp in places from previous rainfall, the Moto2 field lined up on the starting grid and the first problem arose for Elías. His mechanics had detected a hole in the radiator of the bike just before going out on the sighting lap. The bike was taken back into the box and with the joint effort of all mechanics, from the Moto2 team as well as the GP team, they repaired it in time for Toni to start from the grid, even though that meant starting the race in last position.

These circumstances made the development of the race completely different from any original race plans. Right from the start Toni had to ride hard and attack to regain positions, taking a lot of risks doing so. The track was in tricky conditions, with a dry race line but a lot of wet areas all around the track and pushing hard in these conditions required much concentration and feel.

Elías staged a great comeback that led him all the way up to ninth place, but with nineteen laps to go, unfortunately he joined the list of riders who crashed in the race and lost any chance of achieving a good result that would have been well deserved by the Avintia Blusens rider.

Toni did go back out on track in case the rain came and there was going to be a restart of the race, but the liquid element arrived too late with only 3 laps to go. Race Direction red-flagged the race and declared the race a result.

#24 Toni Elías – DNF
This is a real shame. The truth is that we haven’t had too much luck. Overall it’s been a difficult weekend, but we worked well, we improved a lot even though we did not get any rewards back from the hard work. Over the course of the weekend we tried different things and yesterday we found a good way to go. Today in warm up, in the wet, we were quickest, and to be honest we had a good race pace. It was just very unlucky that the radiator had a hole, but the team worked miracles to repair it in time so I could start from the starting grid. Starting last was a handicap, I was forced to push hard and maybe because of that the crash happened. I feel really bad because I had a really good comeback, we had great rhythm and I believe we could have achieved a great result. But I console myself with the fact that we did have a great pace, we did things very right with regards to set up, and we found something that we’ll notice in the coming races and that will help us. I hope that the bad luck ends here and that we’ll find ourselves on the brighter side very soon.

Source: Avintia Racing