At the season finale in Valencia, Spain, the LIQUI MOLY Husqvarna Intact GP riders Collin Veijer and Ayumu Sasaki set new bars with a first and second place on the grid, raising hopes of a promising end to the season.

Collin Veijer never misses an opportunity to cause a stir. The just 18-year-old Dutchman improved from 21st place in the first practice session to 10th place in the third session on the 4.01 km Valencian racetrack, which secured him a direct entry into the highly contested Qualifying 2.

The youngster only had 15 minutes to burn the fastest time on the tarmac. His pole lap of 1’38.311 from Q2 was ultimately 0.624s faster than his time in P3 in the morning, once again underlining his strong development this weekend.

Collin Veijer, P1 – 1’38.311: “We were pretty strong again all weekend, even if I wasn’t looking so much at the results. But I felt pretty strong the whole time and was able to do my laps on my own and consistently. What’s more, we were able to improve from lap to lap, so I knew that I could do it again in qualifying. My first flying lap was already pretty good when I set a faster time than in Practice 3 this morning. But then I tried to reel off the laps and improve each time, which I managed to do by finding the one of other tenth of a second. At one point I saw that I was two or three tenths ahead on a fast lap and finished that lap with a 38.3. From that point on I was already confident of being on the front row, although I tried to keep improving until the end. On my last lap I got stuck behind another rider, but I felt I could improve again. Until then I was on a good way. Nevertheless, I think we can be very happy with our qualifying and we’ll see what we can achieve tomorrow. I don’t know what to expect from the race because it depends a lot on the pace of the others. But for me, my pace is pretty good because I’ve done my qualifying time two or more times. That makes me confident about our pace.”