BMW had issues
BMW Things weren’ t much better on the other side of the BMW garage with Danilo Petrucci only scoring points from an eleventh place in Race One. A collision with Bahattin Sofuoglu in the restarted Sprint race left him in severe hip pain and whilst he was able to finish, it was out of the points. Petrux was in too much discomfort to make the grid for Race Two and it must have been bad because we know he isn’ t afraid of riding through pain. Just to wrap up the plight of the riders involved in the Sprint race crash, factory Yamaha man Locatelli was deemed to be responsible and that cost him a double long lap penalty in the restarted race which ended his chances of scoring points. Team Manager Paul Denning was quite vocal in expressing his objections to the penalty but that’ s his job isn’ t it? Having qualified in sixth and converted that to a sixth-place finish in race one, failing to score in the Sprint race and then crashing early in race two turned what had looked like a return to form for Loka into a frustrating outing. Loka had been under pressure from teammate Vierge at previous rounds but Balaton was not a happy hunting ground for him either. Seventeenth in qualifying was poor by his standards and whilst he scored points in all three races, two tenth place finishes and a twelfth are less than what he’ s capable of. Locatelli and Vierge sit tenth and thirteenth in the series, Remy Gardner and Stefano Manzi on the independent GYTR GTR Yamahas are in sixteenth and seventeenth.
BIMOTA In the Bimota camp, Alex Lowes qualified in tenth and he was able to convert that into sixth and seventh place finishes in the first two races which were both positive outcomes but race two didn’ t go his way. Pushed wide by Balda’, he lost places and had to work his way back through the field. Looking like a top five finish was on the cards, he clipped the back
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