The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team has put together an encouraging Race 1 at the French circuit of Nevers Magny-Cours, a consisting performance from Rabat and Zaidi rewarding both riders with points today.

After completing Friday’s practices, the duo was back out this morning for another short practice, which ran on a dry track. Working to make final setup refinements ahead of Superpole, Rabat was able to find a little more pace with respect to Friday, while Zaidi continued to gain confidence and understanding of this technical French track, one he is competing at for the first time.

The Superpole ran in dry, sunny conditions in the late morning. Rabat and Zaidi both headed into this brief qualifying session with a positive attitude. Looking to continue the progress made during practice, Rabat completed seven laps, the best of which in 1’37.506. This lap time translated into a sixth-row start, in twentieth position, for the afternoon’s first race. Zaidi continued to focus on his own growth path and chip away at his lap times. With the qualifying tyre, the Malaysian rookie put in a best of 1’39.104 – eight tenths quicker than his best free practice reference – to place twenty-first at the session’s end.

As the lights went out on the first of the weekend’s 21-lap races, both riders got away well from row six. Making up ground after a series of crashes for other riders, Rabat and Zaidi were lying seventeenth and eighteenth by the end of lap one. Soon up inside the points zone, a tenacious Tito did his best to maintain a consistent pace for the duration of the 21-lap race, gaining another position in the final stages to cross the line an encouraging fourteenth.

Losing contact with teammate Tito after the first few laps, rookie Zaqhwan focused on putting together a clean race, without mistakes. Making up three more places over the course of the race, the Malaysian closed Race 1 in fifteenth position to score his first championship point of the season.

Tito Rabat #53

“A very difficult race today, to be honest. Yes, we took two points but finished too far from the frontrunners. The drop in tyre performance was not too big, which is a good thing, but we need to build speed out of the corners. Without that, it’s impossible to follow the group. The good news is that we’re clear about what we need to do and will work hard to harness our bike’s strengths and try to improve on the result in tomorrow’s races.”

Zaqhwan Zaidi #21

“I’m happy to have achieved a point and didn’t expect this result today, honestly. We’ve worked hard this weekend, and this result has given me and the team motivation to try and score a similar result tomorrow. We’ll try something different with the setup to improve more tomorrow, but generally I felt I was able to maintain good pace in Race 1. I’ll try my best again in tomorrow’s races; let’s see what we can do.”