The Honda rider enjoyed his best weekend of the 2021 season at Silverstone two weeks ago, when he took advantage of cooler conditions and increased track grip to take pole and finish the race fifth .
After qualifying for Aragón in which he was eighth, Pol Espargaró fell to 13th place in the 23-lap race, where he struggled to find pace in much hotter conditions and on a circuit with much less grip.
Like many of his problems with the Honda this year, Espargaró believes it’s all down to a lack of experience on the bike.
“Well, I think it’s experience,” he explained when asked how he can fix his problems in hot conditions.
“Maybe it’s the only thing that can be, because if you ride the bike for as many hours as possible, then you understand how to get the most out of it in hot conditions, because at low temperatures, or with a lot of grip, or even after one lap, I understand how to ride the bike and I’m fast”.
“I’m one of the fastest, that’s good because I understand how to attack the time without crashing or being consistently fast on my own, like this weekend, and I can be there.”
“But then in these hot conditions, I don’t know. I have to figure out how to go just like I figured out how to look for a great time without crashing.”
“I need to be quicker in those conditions, because now I’m super slow there and it’s painful.”
“I feel really bad for not performing well, I feel like… it’s not that I made a mistake, it’s that I don’t know what to do to be faster in those conditions.”
“It’s painful, because Misano looks like it’s going to be very similar and I’m going to suffer there too.”
“So it can’t be that every time there are hot conditions and low grip it suffers so much, it’s not possible.”
Trying to explain what goes wrong with the bike in hot conditions, Espargaró says that the Honda RC123V becomes “aggressive” and lacks grip at the rear, which in turn causes issues with front grip on entry to the curves.
“Well, it produces a feeling of aggressiveness, as if you were floating on the bike,” he added.
“You don’t stop where you need to, you always feel like you’re going to lose the rear, always skidding a little bit.
“And then because the rear isn’t there, the front also suffers. On the other bikes I had my tools to avoid it or try to use different ways to get into or out of the corners.”
“But here it’s useless. There was a moment in the race where I was a little bit better than the guys in front, but I was very slow. I was doing 1:49.1s when I should be doing 1:48.5s.”
“It’s not a small difference, so something is really wrong. I’m doing things that aren’t good and that’s bad.”
