Josh Herrin #2 Moto2 News
Last week, the American Josh Herrin missed Moto2 testing in Almeria due to a high fever.
But this week, the 23-year-old who won the 2013 AMA SuperBike Championship before joining the Caterham team in Moto2, was recovered, and joined the Moto2 grid Tuesday for the first day of testing at Valencia in Spain.
The sole American in Moto2 was one of the first riders to venture out on the chilly 2.5-mile circuit, and put in 59 laps throughout the day. Herrin put in a best time of 1:38.351 on the first of three days, which placed him 23rd, 2.145 seconds behind the leader, Marc VDS Racing’s Mika Kallio.
Josh Herrin (Caterham Moto2) says: “Today my strategy was to do as many laps as possible so I could learn the track on a new bike and build my confidence. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be a little warmer because today I was taking it very easy as I didn’t want to crash.
“For day two of testing here at Valencia, I hope to improve my lap times and continue to get more comfortable on the bike. I’d like to thank my team for all their hard work today. I am very happy with our result.”
Johan Stigefelt (Caterham Moto2 Team Manager) says: “It was very cold here today so it’s been hard for everybody and so the lap times that we’ve seen haven’t been very good. It’s difficult to predict anything out of this first day. We just focussed on getting some laps in and working with the settings we had for these conditions.
“For Josh it was all about learning the track. He had been here before but it was a long time ago and it’s all new on this bike. He started well, riding many laps and managed to put in a low 1:38 which is very good. That was actually the target for today riding in these conditions so he’s less than two seconds off the pace which means I’m pleased.”
As for Herrin’s teammate, Johann Zarco (#5) suffered a small crash in the first afternoon sessions, but walked away unharmed. He finished 11th, 0.949 of a second behind Kallio.
