CHALLENGING DAY FOR TAKA AT PORTIMAO6 November 2021 | Algarve GP QualifyingTakaaki Nakagami endured a tough day of qualifying ahead of the Algarve Grand Prix with an untimely fall undermining his chances in Saturday’s Q1 session at Portimao. Having narrowly failed to secure automatic progress to Q2, the LCR Honda IDEMITSU rider will now start Sunday’s race from 22nd position on the grid.
Sitting 9th overnight, Taka was hugely unfortunate to miss out on a top-10 spot in FP3 as he was just five thousandths of a second behind Jorge Martin to end up in 11th. After posting 12th in the final free practice session, the Japanese star then slid out at turn five minutes from the end of Q1, leaving him no time to return to the track.Takaaki Nakagami – 22th (1’40.009)“Unfortunately, this afternoon was really tough, I had a crash in Q1 and we lost the opportunity to improve the lap time. It was a small mistake, but the cost was massive. Obviously, it was not the result we were expecting, but from the back of the grid I will try my best and will look to overtake some riders in the race.”