Julian Simon celebrates hard-fought podium

After a tough and long battle with Switzerland’s World Championship hope Tom Lüthi, Suter MMX rider Julian Simon celebrated a fantastic podium finish at his home Grand Prix in Barcelona.

Down in sixth place after one lap, the reigning 125 cc champion quickly moved up to third and second and even looked like a possible winner at a certain stage, but wasn’t quite able to match the pace in the second half of the race, when Yuki Takahashi pulled away for his first victory in the Moto2 category, and when Lüthi had more in reserve on the two final laps to re-take and defend second position.

Julian Simon (60) & Tom Lüthi (12) fighting for place 2

But it was also a difficult day for Suter, as six MMX riders fell victim to a first corner crash caused by Spaniard Alex Debon. Jules Cluzel and Shoya Tomizawa, recently the fastest men in the 13-rider-strong Suter MMX line-up, remounted their bikes, and whereas Tomizawa was forced to retire with excessive damage to his bike only a few laps later, Cluzel fought on and, incredibly, managed to secure 14th place and two world championship points.

“We had a mixed day of good and bad”, said Alessandro Giussani, chief designer at Suter Racing Technology. “Simon managed to stay up front for the whole race distance, and even though his lap times were not fast enough for victory, he scored a valuable podium finish. At the official Moto2 test in Albañiz next week, we will test our new chassis and try to close the gap to Speed Up who were definitely two or three tenths of a second faster per lap here in Barcelona.”

Jules Cluzel (16) & Claudio Corti (71) on Suter-MMX

“The bad side today was that six of our bikes stranded in the first corner due to an unlucky crash of Alex Debon. Cluzel rode an incredible race after that, he overtook many riders and matched the lap times of race winner Takahashi!”

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