Dixon 11th for second consecutive weekend at Spielberg

Jake Dixon and Xavi Vierge claim 11th and 14th respectively for PETRONAS Sprinta Racing at AustrianGP

PETRONAS Sprinta Racing’s Jake Dixon ended the AustrianGP, the second of two back-to-back Moto2 events at Spielberg, 11th. Hindered by a first-lap incident, team-mate Xavi Vierge crossed the finish line 14th.

A great start for Dixon saw him move from 13th to tenth in the opening corners of the race, but after running wide on the third lap found himself back where he started. Able to regain one place before the halfway point, the Brit also picked off another rider to move into 11th with six laps to go. Despite pushing hard in the final laps, Jake was unable to close the gap to the top-ten. This 11th place result moves Dixon into 19th in the riders’ standings with 21 points.

Having started 20th, Vierge found himself caught up in another rider’s Turn 1 incident on the opening lap and lost five places as a result. The Spaniard was quick to recover and started to make his way back through the field, moving into the points on lap nine. With a small gap to the riders ahead, Xavi settled into a good rhythm to try to catch them. Unfortunately the gap proved to be too big to close down and he crossed the line 14th. With a total of 59 points, Vierge holds tenth place in the world championship standings.

After two races at Spielberg, PETRONAS Sprinta Racing will now turn their attention to Dixon’s home race: the British Grand Prix at Silverstone (27-29 August).

“It wasn’t an easy start as neither rider made a good jump forward like we expected. Jake made his way towards the top-ten and we were looking for a top-ten result today. He finished 11th, which is decent, and we’ve taken a step forward. Xavi had to go straight on in the first corner because of another rider’s incident, which destroyed his race more or less. We’ve scored points with both riders in both races here in Austria, so we need to continue this in the next races and we are ready for Silverstone.” – Johan Stigefelt, Team Director

“We’ve had two 11th place finishes back-to-back now, so overall it hasn’t been a bad couple of weekends for us. We’ve been able to improve our Qualifying and we went forward in both races, which is positive. I was on the limit a bit in the race today and I feel like there are a couple of areas that we still need to work on. It sets us up well going into Silverstone though and I genuinely think we can have a really good race there and that we might be able to fight for the podium.” – Jake Dixon, 11th (+21.283)

“If you start 20th like we did today, especially at a track like this, it is easy to get caught up in an incident if a rider makes a mistake and this happened to us. In the first corner I felt a big impact on my right side, luckily I didn’t crash but I was last. After that I did my best to recover as many positions as possible, but the maximum today was 14th. We took two points, which is better than nothing, but we need to analyse all the data because we think we have a small problem with the speed. I hope that we can sort this for the next race in Silverstone and that we can be fighting in the top five.” – Xavi Vierge, 14th (+27.146)

View full standings here!