After what has been a tricky season at times, particularly the last two rounds which have been challenging new tracks to learn, Australian rookie Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team) enjoyed a fantastic Friday at the Autodrom Most. Day one of the Acerbis Czech Round was certainly a jumbled up one with inclement weather persisting, but the 2021 Moto2™ World Champion was strong in both wet and dry conditions.

The day started in a positive way for the #87, who is tackling the fast and flowing Czech circuit for the first time in his career. He was briefly top in FP1 during the wet conditions, before finishing fifth and was second-best Independent behind teammate Dominique Aegerter. However, with a completely dry session in the afternoon, Gardner once again showed good strength and looked like his time would be good enough for top spot, only to miss out by 0.012s to fellow Yamaha rider Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK). A total of 35 laps were set by Gardner, more than anyone else in the top five and he was also fastest in the fourth sector, ironically where his Turkish Yamaha colleague struggled. It’s hard to read into too much of his race pace, with times not consistently in the 1’32s – his next best time after his 1’32.379 was a 1’33.193 on his final flying lap.

Speaking about a Friday to be happy about, Gardner spoke of his day one: “It’s been a bit of a complicated day with the weather. We started FP1 in the wet; we had pretty good feelings and we got a few dry laps in at the end. FP2 was fully dry which was good. It’s my second time here but I don’t really remember the first time “It was in 2016 with Tasca Racing on my Moto2™ bike. It was my first time I came here since then but, honestly, I don’t really remember the track. I’ve done a lot of racing since then. We have to work; I’m not completely comfortable with the bike yet but we’re fast out of the box which is good.”

Attention then turned to his tyre choice, but a big moment on the front at Turn 2 knocked his confidence: “It’s not bad on the first two runs. This was a used tyre from FP1. We put on a new tyre on for the third run. We then used the SC2 on the front, the hard tyre, and it was fine for two laps but, after that, I lost the front at Turn 2 and managed to save it. I didn’t have a really good feeling on the front after this. It was difficult to keep the lap times but, even so, I could’ve been high 32s or low 33s. We need to improve the front end feeling and probably we will use the SC1.”

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