Ruben Fernandez of the HRC team often shows his potential in full, a GP win in Argentina in his past, a handful of podiums in both MX2 and MXGP and in England last weekend, the Spaniard again showed what he is capable of.

A joint-best moto result from Fernandez wasn’t quite enough for the Spaniard to step-up onto the podium, but it was still an excellent MXGP of Great Britain for the Honda CRF450R rider with his five-two results giving him fourth overall and moving him up to fourth in the World Motocross Championship standings.

“I have to admit I’m a little disappointed not to get on the podium, considering how well I rode, especially in that second moto. Still, I am really pleased with that race, and it has given me a lot of confidence that I can start with those guys and run the entire moto at a really fast pace. I closed up to the leader a lot in those last few laps and if I’d passed him, I’d have got on the podium. Now I have a couple of weekends off to get stronger for this next run of races.”

A fourth place on Saturday in the qualification race gave him a good base to attack these two GP-scoring motos and he definitely gave everything he had to try and get on the box. In both races, he got utilised his gate-pick with two brilliant starts inside the top three, but whereas the tricky Matterley Basin conditions caused a couple of small errors in race one, in race two he was fully in control and came really close to his first race-win of the season. It was a big boost for the #70, who now has a couple of weekends to prepare for a new GP at the Kymi-Ring in Finland.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t capitalise out of the gate and instead had to quickly make a number of passes to move himself into the top five. Settling into a good rhythm, he tried to close-up to third place, but he ended up crossing the line in fourth. He would have hoped for more before the race.

“I enjoy coming to Matterley Basin, although this was a very dry version of the circuit. I felt good in practice, posting the second fastest time for second gate-pick. However, I wasn’t able to get a good enough start to fight for the lead and instead had to come through to fourth. It was a solid race, and I was excited for the Sunday races.”

Now, a nice rest and some time to reflect on his previous races and enter the MXGP of Finland with huge motivation from his solid result in England. No doubt, the sand will be tough for him, but we all know that Fernandez is a fighter and will work hard to get as many points as possible.

Bavo Swijgers image