When Guenther Steiner’s Tech3 takeover plans were announced at Barcelona last season, the weekend ended with the former F1 team boss celebrating a podium finish with Enea Bastianini.
At the time, Tech3 founder Herve Poncharal jokingly called Steiner “a lucky bastard” for achieving a ‘debut’ podium.
But after completing the Tech3 takeover this winter, the team’s first MotoGP of its new ‘Steiner era’ proved “laborious” at Buriram.
Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini qualified just 17th and 20th, failed to score points in the Sprint race, before Bastianini salvaged a twelfth place from the grand prix.
“It’s clearly a disappointment. This is Günther Steiner’s first weekend with us and all we could offer him was this rather laborious spectacle,” motorsport.com quotes Tech3 team manager Nicolas Goyon as telling Canal+.
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT
The results were even more galling, given factory KTM rider Pedro Acosta charged to a one-two finish and the early world championship lead.
“We are clearly disappointed,” continued Goyon, “especially when we look at the results of the factory team. It’s clear that this is what we call a double whammy.
“I think we had good tests at Sepang, it went pretty well. Here, we already suffered quite a bit last year with our two riders, Enea and Maverick… we never managed to find settings that paid off.
“And, once again, on the race weekend, what really handicaps us is qualifying.
“The weekend was clearly very, very disappointing. We’ll have to remedy this very quickly.”
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT
Acosta’s team-mate Brad Binder scored points in both races by finishing sixth and seventh.
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter