Ever-improving Pol Espargaro less than a second behind fastest riders on first day

Pol Espargaro has set the 13th fastest time, less than one second from the provisional pole position on the first day of practice at the legendary Le Mans circuit. The HP Tuenti rider was 8th, half a second behind the leader and on hard race tyres, but in the final moments he had no luck with the soft compound and lost five positions. Polyccio showed again that he is always improving; in Portugal he was 1.4 seconds behind after practice, so this time the improvement has been half a second. The work for tomorrow will be about the setup of the bike, especially in terms of solving a slight problem with the clutch and take advantage of the the soft tyres, and improve the racing line, especially in the second and fourth sector of the historic French track.

13. Pol Espargaro, 1.39.655
“It was a day of positive things and some not so positive ones, because I crashed in the morning on an oil stain in a curve as it also happened to four other riders. Overall I’m happy because we’re getting closer to the fastest time, now it’s less than a second. The other negative of the day were the soft tyres in the last minute, bouncing a lot and making me lose a few positions. Everything went much better with the harder compound and until then I was 8th and half a second behind the provisional pole position. I’ve also had some problems with the clutch, although I’m sure that tomorrow we will have that solved. Little by little we make progress and now comes the really hard part, because the best riders are very fast and have more experience than us in Moto2. We knew we need to be learning, but we’re working hard every practice to move up.”

Source: HP Tuenti Racing