Rory Skinner’s first visit to the iconic Tuscan circuit of Mugello was cut short after a two crashes during practice for the Italian Grand Prix.
The Moto2 rookie crashed his OnlyFans American Racing Kalex at turn 14 during second practice, bringing out the red flag with 25 minutes remaining and damaging his right ankle.
The Scot powered through to put in eight laps in Saturday morning’s final practice, before Jeremy Alcoba lost control of his machine, taking himself and Rory into the gravel at turn two. After a check at the medical centre, Rory and the team opted to withdraw for the remainder of the weekend, mindful of two remaining races of the June triple header.
Commenting on the weekend, Rory said: “It’s not been a great weekend really. I enjoyed the laps I did during the Mugello track, and I’ve started to feel more and more comfortable, but things didn’t really go to plan in FP2, I had a small moment which resulted in a pretty big crash, but I appreciate the boys getting the bike rebuilt after basically it being totalled.
“FP3, I was quite hurt, I did some ligament damage to my right foot, so we were just trying to see where we were at as it was a whole new bike that the boys had to build for me, so I was adjusting to that as well. I kind of got the pace towards where we were yesterday, finishing off yesterday and, it didn’t feel too bad, it was quite sore but then another rider just got a bit impatient for no real reason and wiped me clean out. Unfortunately, that put me out for the remainder of the weekend.
“I’ve got bleeding within three of the bones on my right ankle, so I’ve got quite a lot of pain which isn’t ideal but hopefully, we are ready for Sachsenring, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
Rory and the OnlyFans American Racing team travel to Sachsenring this weekend, hoping to be fit enough to compete in the German Grand Prix.