Spanish rider finishes third in the Moto3 final standings thanks to his ninth position in Valencia. Aron Canet crosses the line nineteenth after being forced to start from pit lane.
The Valencia Grand Prix was a bittersweet race for the Repsol Moto3 riders. Jorge Navarro, who started from 13th position on the grid, managed to finish ninth after a long battle in a group, claiming the necessary points to secure third in the overall World Championship standings. Teammate Aron Canet had been set to start from pole position for the first time in his Grand Prix career, but his bike stopped on the grid and he was unable to take advantage of his excellent qualifying result. Forced to begin the contest from pit lane, the rookie rose up the order to take the chequered flag nineteenth.
Jorge Navarro
9th – at 5.263 sec.
“It’s been a very difficult weekend because I started with a heavy crash on Friday and, once we had overcome that, I had a second crash on Saturday. The weekend was an uphill battle, but in the warmup today I found a good feeling with the bike without risking too much. I didn’t feel bad in the race, but when I saw that ninth would be enough for third position in the World Championship I chose not to take too many risks and to maintain my place. It’s not what I was hoping for here at home, as I would have liked to have been up at the top and finishing my time with the team with a good race, but today I was not one at one hundred percent and wanted to secure third place.”
Aron Canet
19th – at 16.838 sec.
“I don’t know what happened at the start, because when I got to the grid I had the bike in neutral and suddenly it stopped. I am not happy, because I believe that today I could have done much better and we could have fought for the victory; I had the pace and the confidence for that. I grew in strength despite the pain in my hand, and the pace at the end of the race was very good. I’ll take that away from this weekend. It’s been a good season in which I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure next year I’ll do a lot better.”
