Cycle News Staff | June 25, 2012
American Kenny Noyes got the holeshot off the second row and led the first two laps of the Spanish National Moto2 race at the Circuit of Catalunya, but championship leader Jordi Torres slipped past at the end of the straight to start lap three and slowly pulled away. Noyes was unable to match the pace due to chatter problems on his PL Racing Suter, allowing Torres to inch away and eventually win by 3.7 seconds.
Noyes then found himself in a race-long battle for second with Ramon Alvaro (Ariane) and Alejandro Mariñelarena (Suter) with the American finally beating the two Spaniards by .049 of a second and 1.3 seconds, respectively, with the three swapping places many times over the 16-lap race.
Noyes is the only rider in the series to have finished on the podium in every race. He was third in the first three and improved to second in this one. The next two rounds both take place at Albacete, a track where the American still holds the 1000cc Formula Extreme record set back in 2009.
“We improved the chatter, but we are still not able to throw the bike in hard,” Noyes said in a team release. “The idea was to get the holeshot and I did. We led the first two laps before Torres came by. I wanted to get Torres into a group scrap and try and wear him down, but he got past me at the end of the straight and after a lap behind him I saw he was able to ride hard in spite of his injuries. We had our hands full in the fight for second. Ramos had us on corner entry and on the brakes, but we were able to get him back in a few places and we were faster down the straight. Our objective was to stay on the podium and we did, moving up to second, but we have to beat Torres in the next one at Albacete or he is going to get away. The team did a great job. We have some tests coming up to try reduce the chatter so that I can ride the bike the way I want to.
