Pol Espargaró did not want to go into depth to talk about the news of the day in the run-up to the Austrian Grand Prix, after Yamaha suspended Maverick Viñales and accused him of deliberately trying to break the engine of his M1.
The one from Honda said he did not know the details of the case and preferred to wait to speak with Maverick before being able to comment.
However, the lack of support that Viñales has supposedly had at Yamaha in recent times is somewhat reminiscent of the situation experienced by Pol at KTM a few years ago, when he suffered a serious injury, missed several races and the team did not was by his side.
“Each case is a world and my case with KTM was a point that we resolved between the two of us and that I don’t want to talk about or uncover wounds,” said Pol.
“In the case of Mack, I have a very good relationship with him, he is a very good boy, he will have lost his nerve, I don’t know, I don’t know the situation, I want to talk to him to understand what has happened. Without a doubt, you have to be careful with motorcycles, because they are very powerful machines and we can put a lot of people in danger.”
“Maverick is a very, very, very noble boy and first I want to talk to him to understand the situation in a more global way,” he insisted.
Another piece of news ahead of the weekend at the Red Bull Ring is that Michelin has changed the front hard tire compared to last weekend.
“In my opinion, the new tough striker is a bit too tough. In the first left-hand corner it arrives very cold. A few of those who have asked for this rubber are KTM, they generated the problem and have received the solution. We will try it, but I don’t know if it will help us”, he valued.
Pol did not have a good performance last weekend at this same track and his problem is perfectly localized this year.
“Ranking is key. The Ducati go down from 1.1 to 1.5 seconds with the soft rubber. All the Ducati are at a high level and there will be other bikes that will go fast. It’s very complicated. I was 17 thousandths behind Nakagami in Q1. Marc didn’t qualify very well either. Here everything goes very little margin. Precisely I wore a medium tire in Q1 and it went wrong because then I had to use it in the second race. It’s a bit desperate. Qualifying is vital, it’s half the race, if you don’t start in the top five you lose five seconds in the first few laps and that’s unrecoverable. We will try to classify better”, he argued.
“In KTM I was fast over one lap and all the good results were because we qualified well on Saturday. Sometimes I finished ahead of people who had a better pace, but being ahead in the first few laps gives you a lot: you save rubber, stress, fatigue. Nowadays overtaking is very tiring. The start and doing it in front is crucial. Ducati is the one who has understood it best and they are capable of lowering the time a lot with the soft rubber. It is our weak point right now,” he said.
