Ai Ogura once again paid the price for a low grid position before showing podium-level pace in the middle stages of the Malaysian MotoGP.
The same weekend he officially lost to Fermin Aldeguer in the Rookie of the Year contest, the Trackhouse rider fought back from 17th to 12th in Saturday’s sprint and remained in contention for eighth place for much of Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Ogura ended up finishing 10th, just 0.5 seconds behind group leader Luca Marini, taking the lead for Aprilia ahead of Marco Bezzecchi.
“Overall, I’m very happy with my race,” Ogura said. “I think it’s clear this weekend compared to the last few races that I’m much more in line with the other riders.
“Still, there is still a lot to improve. Portimao will be a difficult course to understand everything, but we will see what we can do in the last two rounds of the year.”
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Team principal Davide Brivio praised Ogura’s pace and overtaking.
“I’m happy for Ai. I think he recovered well to go from 17th to a top-10 finish. Especially at the end, he was very fast, had good pace and did some great overtaking.”
“So this was a good job and we are very happy with it. As always, his pace until the end of the race was very good so we are happy with that.”
Ogura remains in 16th place with 79 points at the world championship to Aldeguer’s 186 points going into next weekend’s penultimate round in Portimao.
Teammate Raul Fernandez, who won the last race at Phillip Island, crashed just in front of Kokura on lap 12 of 20.