Aleix Espargaro crashes out of Catalan GP

Aleix Espargaró compromised his chances for a good placement in the Spanish MotoGP race today with a crash. Forced to start from the seventh row after less than positive qualifiers and due to a penalty incurred during warm up (when he involuntarily found himself on Jorge Lorenzo’s line) which relegated him three positions farther back, Aleix was in a position where he had to overtake a lot of riders straight away.

With a decidedly improved feeling astride his Aprilia compared to Friday and Saturday, it only took him a few laps to catch up with Redding, Bautista, Rins, Pol Espargaró and Nakagami. However, shortly after overtaking the Japanese rider, he lost the front end and wound up in the gravel.

ALEIX ESPARGARO
“One of my most difficult weekends. Usually on this track I am able to be competitive, but not this time. We made some significant changes to the RS-GP compared to yesterday and, to be honest, I felt a lot better, both in warm up and in the race. Unfortunately, everything was compromised by the qualifiers yesterday and the penalty this morning just added to that. I started very far back and I recovered a lot of positions straight away, but unfortunately then I had a stupid sliding crash on a turn where I did not expect that I could have crashed. The tests tomorrow will be fundamental for us. We need to change something in terms of settings in order to come out of this complicated period.”