The Grand Prix of Catalunya took place at a challenging Bellpuig circuit in front of 17,000 spectators as rain on the qualifying races on Saturday turned into sunshine on Sunday and Yamaha Monster Energy Ricci MX Team’s Alessandro Lupino grabbed his first top three finish of his career with 3rd place in the second moto.

In race 1 Lupino started in the top ten: the young Italian spent part of the race battling for top ten spot, but then had to slow down because of the slippery and bumpy track and took the chequered flag in 16^th , which meant ninth overall at the end of the day, his best result ever.

In MX1 AXO riders Ken De Dycker and Steve Ramon took sixth and eleventh overall in what turned out to be quite a difficult week end: De Dycker took eighth and fourth, while Ramon was struck by some bad luck in Race 1: he went down on the first turn after having to break to avoid hitting Cairoli and was cleaned out from behind.  Ramon remounted at the back of the pack and quickly moved through the field to salvage as many valuable points as possible. “The Bomb”  shot into 12th spot with 5 minutes left on the clock when a lapped rider fell in front of him which relegated him to 15th at the checkered flag. In Race 2 Ramon was seventh.

In the Superbike, held at Kyalami (South Africa) Chris Vermeulen once more had his weekend conditioned by his injured right knee, but he found real progress in race two with his set-up, and hopes for better results in two week’s time in America. Chris was 18th and 16th, while Max Neukirchner suffered from further chatter problems over Kyalami’s severe bumps and, despite an improvement to the bike for race two, was only able to post 19th and 17th place finishes.