The team’s riders to leave the line from seventh and eight row respectively as soon the lights will go for Moto2’s debut race in Thailand
Saturday morning’s FP3 was already an uphill session for the Dutch based outfit when Joe Roberts and Steven Odendaal both posted numerous decent lap times to close the session in the top 20. Though Moto2 category is always hard-fought but this weekend at Buriram’s tricky Chang International Circuit, the competition is looking tighter than even. But Steven Odendaal from South Africa and his Californian team mate Joe Roberts managed the situation quite will to qualify for P21 and P22 respectively on Sunday’s starting grid.
#4 Steven ODENDAAL (NTS RW Racing GP, NTS), Grid position P21 – 1´37.287 (20/20):
“Today’s qualifying was ok but, unfortunately, I missed out the first part of it due to some minor mistakes by myself. But anyway, it wasn’t too bad finally and I think we definitely can improve for tomorrow. Therefore, we will be trying something during warm up. O.9 seconds off the pace means that we need to find another 0.4 to be in a nice mix for the race. I’m quite excited for the race tomorrow and I want to say thanks to the team for all their hard efforts.”
#16 Joe ROBERTS (NTS RW Racing GP, NTS), Grid position P22 – 1´37.432 (14/22):
” To end up in P22 with only one second off means it wasn’t such bad qualifying for us. But it’s unbelievable competitive here so, it’s going to be a tough race and really tight tomorrow. It will be such as important to get a good start and then, let’s see where we will end up.”
Jarno JANSSEN (Team manager):
“It was a good day for us overall. Both riders did a good job, also this morning when we were competitive too with 0.8 seconds behind the leader. Qualifying, honestly speaking, is always a bit difficult because you need that kind of luck, but we managed well, and we more or less kept our positions from FP3 and I think, these positions give us a good chance to fight for some points in the race. But first, it’s going to be important to get a good start and that the first couple of laps are clean and we can keep the contact the top 15 straight away.”
