Joan Mir maintains championship lead after placing 5th at Silverstone

At 12:40 pm (GMT +1), Silverstone’s impressive track, the twelfth round of 2017 and the 100th in the history of the Moto3 class, came alive as the light out.

After yesterday’s rainy day, the English sun re-emerged on the starting grid, placing the young riders in the ideal conditions to express themselves at their best on track. For the Leopard Racing team, Joan Mir and Livio Loi started from the 1st and 5th row.

Mir started well behind the poleman Fenati, with teammate Livio Loi quickly recovering 5 positions in the traffic on the first lap. Soon the two RBA Racing team KTMs came to the front, but at the 2nd lap Palma de Mallorca’s talent took command of operations. Meanwhile Loi took seventh position behind Fenati. But the head group was now together: the Gresini pair were also noted in the front. In the middle of the race Mir was free of Rodrigo and Guevara’s vice while Loi was firmly in the top five.

The head group widened and the rhythm became locked, not a single rider able to escape in the lead. Livio Loi seemed to be reborn and, five laps from the end, even took the lead in the race, while his team mate temporarily slips to the edge of the Top Ten. The last three laps were the most important: Joan Mir came back and pondered a final attack, when in the last lap the incident between Guevara and Bendsneyder forced Race Direction to expose the red flag.

Joan Mir cut the finish line in fifth place followed by his teammate Livio Loi. A second consecutive successful result for Belgium after the near-podium in Austria and great leap in the rankings, guided firmly by the talent of Palma de Mallorca that kept the gap unchanged (+64 p.) on Aron Canet, who with the victory today has overtaken Romano Fenati (+66 p.)

#36 Joan MIR – 5th:
“I can say that ‘the phenomenal fight’ was not Mayweather vs. McGregor last night: it was that of Moto3 today! A crazy race from start to finish. I didn’t think about the points, but I’m happy for the 5th place finish. Certainly it could have been better, but it could have ended up worse. I had a card to play for the last lap, but these are the races. Luckily this round is over, because Silverstone is not among my favorite circuits. Now there are two rounds I like, as Misano and Aragon, and I can not wait to face on them. Even last year, after this race I started to push hard.”