After five well deserved weeks off, Red Bull KTM Tech3 got back to business on Friday at the Silverstone circuit in England, as the team crossed the Channel for  round 9 of the Moto3™ World Championship, the British Grand Prix. Daniel Holgado headed to the second half of the season with a sixteen-point lead on the championship, fully recharged to continue defending his title chances, and Filippo Farioli returned to his team eager to make a step forward in his rookie season.

Having trained hard all summer, Spaniard Daniel Holgado reunited with his team fully motivated for the next twelve rounds of the season, very much knowing that the four upcoming European rounds will be key for the championship before flying overseas. The young boy did not quite finish the first half like he would have wanted with a Dutch Grand Prix to forget, but there were a lot of positives to feed from after he won three of eight races in 2023, a number he will for sure want to increase. Under a rather classic grey British sky, the action resumed at 9:00am LT this morning, and Holgado settled in P7 after Practice 1 with a lap in 2’13.693, less than a second away from the top. In the afternoon session, he managed to take his lap time down to 2’13.013, and took narrowly the fourteenth spot in the standings, meaning that he will have a provisional Q2 place to defend in FP3 when the action resumes tomorrow at 08:40 local time.

Filippo Farioli had the summer to reflect on his first four months in the Moto3™ class, as he focused on his training to be as ready as possible for the busy months coming ahead. The young rookie was discovering the British layout for the first time this morning on his KTM. As it has been the case most of the Friday mornings, the young Italian dedicated FP1 to finding his marks on the 5.9km long layout. He rode his fastest lap in 2’14.983 this morning, and later managed to grab a few hundredths to take his time down to 2’13.882. He closed the first day back at school in twenty-second, and will look to continue improving tomorrow morning, just before the qualifying sessions.

“I am super happy to finally be back on the bike after five weeks. I trained a lot for the next coming months, so it feels good to be back with the team. Our first day back was positive overall, because I felt very good on the bike. Our fastest lap in Free Practice 2 was not perfect, so we have a big margin for improvement. I am happy anyway because the pace was good, so I am looking forward to tomorrow!”

“The day could have been better, but I enjoy this track a lot to be honest. The feeling with the bike was good, I tried to ride on my own as always, but I could not do a good enough lap because I had other riders in front of me. We will continue to work hard tomorrow morning, but that will also all depend on the weather conditions. Let’s keep pushing.”