Some of you may have noticed Tommy Searle absent from Sunday’s Russia results. Searle has explained that he/the team felt it was not safe to race in the points-paying motos after yesterday’s mechanical issues with the BOS GP Kawasaki KX450.

Searle retired from the Qualifying Race on Saturday after suffering another bike issue and it looks like they have not been able to get to the bottom of the problem. It’s also been reported that he had travelled to Russia without a mechanic for this weekend, which isn’t going to help matters.

Here’s what Tommy had to say on his social media account: “Gutted I wonā€™t be racing today. I work hard and want nothing more than to be lining up but under the circumstances here in Russia and the problems we have had yesterday we were unable to determine the problem to be safe to race.

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“The team will work hard this week to try and fix and be ready for next week’s GP in Latvia.”

In the opening MXGP race today, Searle’s team-mate Evgeny Bobryshev ā€“ who was racing his last race before heading for surgery to fix a nagging injury ā€“ went down early in the moto which brought out the medical flags. It looked like Bobby was in some serious discomfort and was trying to get his race boot off.

There’s no official update on Bobryshev’s condition.

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