A battle for fifth place isn\u2019t usually the kind of thing to get a team manager too concerned, but during the Jerez MotoGP Davide Brivio was \u201cworried\u201d as his two riders battled for that final top-five spot.<\/p>\n
Ai Ogura<\/a> and Raul Fernandez<\/a> had had almost opposite races during the Spanish MotoGP<\/a> on 26 April, Fernandez starting well before his pace faded slightly at the end while Ogura started slowly and made up ground in the last laps.<\/p>\n The two riders converged in the closing laps as Fernandez caught Johann Zarco<\/a> and Ogura ate into the gap ahead of him. They both cleared Zarco within a lap of each other, and then Ogura used his superior late-race performance to get the better of his teammate, Trackhouse Racing<\/a> boss Brivio admitting afterwards that while he knows Ogura is \u201cclever\u201d he was concerned about the potential outcomes of their battle.<\/p>\n \u201cI was worried,\u201d Brivio said lightheartedly when speaking to TNT Sports after the race in Jerez.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I saw 0.4, 0.3, 0.2 I said \u2018Oh my God, here we are!\u2019 But I know that Ai is quite clever, he knows what to do \u2013 hopefully!\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cBut then I thought maybe next time it\u2019s better we talk a little bit more before the race!\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was good. We enjoyed a lot, it was great fun and it was good to see that recovery. Jerez is a track where it\u2019s not that easy to do many overtakes in recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe started P9, P11, and I think if we would\u2019ve had a qualifying on the dry we could\u2019ve stayed maybe one or two rows more in front and it would\u2019ve been another race.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnyway, I\u2019m happy because despite that we managed to get a good recovery to end up with top-six with both riders, a good battle, I think we entertained a bit the public and the fans. Happy, we enjoyed.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernandez and Ogura now sit sixth and eighth in the standings, respectively, either side of Jerez winner Alex Marquez.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A battle for fifth place isn\u2019t usually the kind of thing to get a team manager too concerned,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[34422,64,63,806,805,803,804,13147,85,113427],"class_list":["post-640507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-ai-ogura","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-raul-fernandez","tag-sports","tag-trackhouse-motogp-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}