“14th to fifth feels like a win”: Jake Dixon strengthens late Moto2 title bid

Jake Dixon says he is ‘super happy’ with his run from 14th to fifth during Round 13 of the 2024 Moto2 World Championship in Misano as he maintained his trajectory towards a late bid for this year’s riders’ title.

The Briton - who failed to score a single point in any one of the opening five rounds in the wake of an injury sustained at the Qatar Moto2 curtain raiser - has been on a charge up the overall standings in recent events after a string of strong results.

Arriving in Misano on the back of a second win of the season at Aragon just seven days earlier, Dixon however gave himself work to do on the CFMoto Aspar Team Kalex in the San Marino Moto2 after qualifying on the fifth row in 14th place.

However, the Kent rider came on strong in the second-half of the race, picking his way through to fifth at the flag. With Ai Ogura the only rider inside the overall top five to out-score Dixon, the Briton was satisfied with the end result considering his starting position.

“I feel like it’s a win to come from where we came from,” he told TNT Sports.

“It hasn’t been an easy weekend, I just seemed to put the bike where it needed to be, it didn’t want to go in certain places, I just tried to stay in there at the beginning and I knew I would be stronger at the end.

“If we were on the front two rows, generally I think we could have fought for the podium, but it wasn’t to be. I got the maximum points we could have gotten from the position we were in and I am super happy.”

Though he has ceded two points to the overall top spot - now held by new points’ leader Ogura - in the standings, Dixon remains within range of a title bid over the remaining seven events.

As such, while there is a 45 point bridge to gap to Ogura, he is now just three points shy of Alonso Lopez and Joe Roberts tied on third overall.

Dixon will get another chance to shine at Misano when the Moto2 series resumes with a second outing at Misano later this month, the consequence of the planned Kazakhstan and Indian MotoGP events being cancelled.

“Hopefully next week we can be stronger, we can’t afford to do what we had this weekend.”