World Championship leader David Alonso will fight to increase his lead on a circuit where he already fought for victory last year

The Red Bull Ring is the next stop in the Moto3 World Championship. With the championship halfway through, the lightweight category travels to Austria for the eleventh round of the season. There, CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team rider David Alonso will fight to extend his lead. The Colombian has led the overall standings since the Catalan Grand Prix and, after his second place at Silverstone, has a 53-point advantage over second-placed rider Iván Ortolá. Alonso arrives at the Austrian Grand Prix with the challenge of redeeming himself from last year's race. The Colombian had managed to recover a gap of one and a half seconds with the leader and, after managing to get into the lead at the first corner of the track, at the start of the twelfth lap, he crashed just a few metres further on. That ended his chances of getting back-to-back wins, having debuted on top of the podium at Silverstone two weeks earlier. This weekend, the CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team rider will seek to write the Red Bull Ring into his list of victories and thus add his seventh victory of the season, with the permission of rivals such as Iván Ortolá, Dani Holgado and Collin Veijer.

CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team rider Joel Esteban faces another weekend at a track unknown to him. Despite this, Esteban arrives highly motivated and eager to get a great result. The young rookie continues to set himself the goal of improving in qualifying: at Silverstone, starting from behind of the grid diminished his chances in the race. After the first ten races of the year, Esteban is in fifteenth in the World Championship. In this second half of the season, he hopes to make a step forward to fight to be the best rookie. Now, the best ranked among the rookies is Ángel Piqueras, who is 19 points ahead of him.

David Alonso: “The Red Bull Ring is a completely different circuit to Silverstone. It will be important to get a good understanding of the braking from the start, because the braking points there are very important. We will have to prepare the bike well for those hard brakings. Last year I learned there that, even if you are very competitive, if you want to take on the world, the world will take you on. You must stay calm and always use your head.”

Joel Esteban: “As almost always this year, we are going to a circuit that is new to me. I am going to watch a lot of races to understand the track, its lines, how the first and the last laps are like…”