Malaysia is still there where we left it. In the last few years the traffic changed a lot, now it looks like being in Milan city center and there are no more thousand of scooters around. The weather is a bit better but still very hot and with 80% of humidity.
For this race Antonelli made his return earlier than what we expected since his injury was less serious than what it seemed. He had tiring and expensive trips going back to Italy and then back to Malaysia to make some medical checks. Maybe with Doctor Costa’s experience this could have been avoided. Antonelli got back on his bike on Friday and felt immediately at his ease and this forced Montella to act like a spectator in Sepang. Overall it was a positive weekend. We ended up well in qualification with Suzuki 7th and Antonelli 10th, both riders in top ten.
Due to the bad weather forecast for Sunday the schedule has been changed and moved up of one hour, to avoid a Silverstone-like situation. The alarm got us out of bed at 5am as the warmup was at 7.40. As far as I remember this was the first time but we took advantage of this early morning as we didn’t have to pack in rush after the race.
Race was thrilling and complicated at the same time, for two reasons: for Tatsu’s stupid crash during the warmup and because at the beginning of the race the track was still a bit wet.
Antonelli took it easy in the first laps but then, as soon as he got a good feeling with the track he was able to finish 10th marking the second fastest lap. Tatsu made huge steps forward managing to stay with the leading group for the whole race and overtake with no fear. He just misses a bit more confidence to be more “hungry” in the last corners of the race.
And now we go back home after almost one month away… In Riccione the sun is still warm and shining which makes it nice to wake up early in the morning. Whatever you can say about Italy, I can’t event think about living far from it. Home sweet home!
-PaoloSic58-