Sport + Motorsport
Cormac Buchanan finished 18th at the Autodrom Brno circuit in Czechia on Sunday, but he's not dwelling on it. He can't — the next race is already here.
The Southland teenager had a rough weekend in the Moto3 World Championship from the start. Set-up problems limited his top speed through Friday and into Saturday, putting him behind before qualifying even began.
"Q1 was disappointing as I trusted myself to go alone, but I just couldn't put the lap together and show our true potential. We'd made a huge step in FP2 earlier in the day and I felt strong but with the changing track conditions, I just couldn't replicate the lap time needed to give us a crack at Q2," Buchanan said. "Qualifying and the time attack is still an area I have to work on for the future."
Sunday's race was undone early. An incident in the opening stages forced Buchanan wide and broke contact with the lead group. From there, the deficit never closed.
"From that moment on, it was all about fighting back. Unfortunately, the gap proved insurmountable back to the group fighting for P7. I was able to match their pace and chip away at it but it's hard to recover the time when there's not much separating the lap times given how incredibly competitive this Moto3 class is," he said.
He crossed the line 18th. Not the result he wanted, but Buchanan pushed through to the flag regardless.
"Still, we kept pushing until the chequered flag and there are some positives to take away. Giving up isn't in my DNA. Together with my team, we know we can achieve what we want, so we won't stop trying until we get there."
The saving grace is the calendar. Back-to-back rounds mean there's no time to spiral.
"The good thing about back-to-back race weekends is there's no time to dwell on what might have been. You've just got to process it and move on because it's a new race week just hours later," Buchanan said. "When things don't quite go to plan, straight away we have another chance to improve and that's where the focus is. We learned a lot this weekend and we'll use that to our advantage."
The Moto3 championship moves to TT Circuit Assen in the Netherlands this weekend.