Termas de Río Hondo.- The youngest of the brothers from Granollers faced the Termas de Río Hondo weekend as spearhead of the Repsol Honda team in the face of Marc Márquez’s loss, and was finally able to close the frenetic first day with an expectant result , managing to be fourth in the classification.
However, Pol Espargaró had to struggle to reach that position on a particular day where free practice was compressed after the suspension of activity on Friday.
“It was really complicated because it takes a long time to rest from one day to the next, that your head continues to think and work while you sleep or while you are thinking. You don’t really realize it but the next day you do different things that you didn’t imagine you could do or that you were going to to do”, began Pol his balance of Saturday speaking with Motorsport.com in Termas.
“So not having this break to think, to let the engineers work, it’s all very wild, very new, you have to push without having the situation under control. That produces falls, problems on the bike that you are not able to solve and it makes the competition more complicated. We started fourth, which is good, but I still feel that I am not ready for the race”.
On how these days are and if it would be possible to do grand prix of just two days in MotoGP in the future, he declared: “Stressing, it was very stressful. I also crashed, I had to run in Q1, I didn’t have enough tires for Q2 .Fuck, everything was going wrong but with a good ending.”
“There were big decisions to be made at the last moment to change the bike, and finally it seems to have worked out. But it was tight, all tight and until the last moment.”
“This two-day program, some people think maybe it would work for the future. For me it’s impossible.”
“We can’t do this, it’s very stressful and dangerous because we push these bikes to the limit with very little knowledge of the track, the bike on this track and the tyres. It’s tough.”
The Spanish rider suffered a crash at turn 1 of the Termas de Río Hondo circuit during the second practice session, which he explained was related to a problem with his Honda.
“We had a problem today in the engine brake at turn 1 that we were not able to solve all day because there has not been time to gather all the electronic engineers and solve the problem. In the race I understand that it will be solved” , he indicated.
“It’s a big problem. It’s a fast corner in which, when you lose the front end, you can’t do much to save it and chance plays a lot. Tomorrow we hope it will be solved because it will have to be 25 perfect race laps. We can’t make any mistakes, either falling or going wide in the first corner,” he added.
Beyond his result and personal inconveniences, Pol was happy to see his brother Aleix give Aprilia its first pole position in MotoGP.
“It is evident that as a brother even more, but when a pilot works so hard, is so methodical and so hard-working and persistent in what he wants, when the results come out it is nice to see the result of that effort. And also being Aleix, which I have close, I know how he lives, how he works… even more [happening],” he said.
“I am proud for him and I think Aprilia should be very proud of the Saturday they have done, not only with Aleix, who is incredible to do pole, but also with Maverick (Viñales), who is sticking his head out and starting to roll. very fast. In the race they will be the rivals to beat”.
With Aleix on pole position and Pol in fourth leading the second row, the two brothers will be very close and fighting for important things at the start on Sunday.
“In the end, he’s just another rider on the grid. It’s true that when overtaking you approach him differently, but hopefully we can fight with him tomorrow. He’s in very good shape, the bike too, and that’s how he’s going to It will be difficult to fight the race, but in the end there are more positions than the first. We will have to think a little and save this weekend”, he concluded.
