Pol Espargaró: “When the rest ride the soft, it gets complicated for me”

The Honda rider finished the first practice session of the weekend for the Spanish Grand Prix with the eighth fastest time, just over four tenths off the fastest. But in the afternoon, when the drivers pushed hard and started looking for fastest laps on the softer tire compound on the rear wheel, Pol Espargaró went as far as 14th, almost a second behind Pecco Bagnaia, the fastest of the day.

Despite finishing so far away, Espargaró considered that he had taken a step forward compared to the last race, held in Portimao .

“I felt better than in Portugal, especially in the morning. Knowing where to stop and where not to make mistakes takes a lot of stress off the bike. In Jerez with the set-up things were clearer”, explained the Honda rider .

“In the morning session I finished near the top. In the afternoon, everyone has started to mount soft tires and things get complicated for us. Race pace is still easier for us than a fast lap. There are riders, like Bagnaia , who drop a second and a half on the soft tyre, and that is difficult to understand. In that aspect there are riders much faster than us”, he admitted.

At the end of the day, Takaaki Nakagami ‘s was the best Honda (6th), almost half a second quicker than Pol. Apparently the Japanese is using new unspecified parts.

“ Taka seems to have a different chassis, I don’t know exactly what he’s using, but he seems to have different packages on top of the bike. I am not at that point of trying new things, but seeing that his things are going well for him, we will have to follow his line a bit. He is half a second faster than us, and with medium rubber no one has gone faster than him.

Polyccio is calm about that, as he understands that if any improvements come to Honda it will be immediately available to him.

“Everything the riders do within Honda is important, because we can check it and it helps. I’m still not at the point where I can test things because I can’t contribute much yet”, in reference to the lack of knowledge of the bike.

One of the critical points of the Honda is the front end, and in Jerez the Michelin tire catalog does not help.

“Here you can use all the rear (tyres), but we won’t be able to mount the hard one in front. The work window is not very wide in that aspect. With the medium (in front) we are a bit at the limit and we cannot use the hard one in this circuit, and I doubt that the rest can”.