Espargaro only starting from 7th row after struggling with soft tyres

Pol Espargaro has not been successful in qualifying for the Grand Prix of France, unable to take advantage of two sets of tyres available and subsequently being relegated to the seventh row of the grid. The Tuenti rider has improved his laptime from yesterday by two tenths of a second, but he still lost six positions in a highly ranked class with the first 20 riders separated by only one second. Polyccio, one of the fastest in the first sector of the legendary Le Mans circuit, has trouble in the second and especially the fourth sector where he lost the most on the fastest riders.

19. Pol Espargaro, 1.39.481: “This qualifying has not gone too well and I’ll start from quite far behind, but with confidence because my pace is pretty good. In the last minutes of the session, with the two sets of soft tyres, I couldn’t improve my laptime as expected and finally I will have to start from the seventh row of the grid. In the test at Estoril I trained the starts and hopefully tomorrow this will help me to gain some positions. I hoped to improve my laptime from yesterday more, but the bike bounced a lot in the front and rear and had little grip, making it impossible to go faster or follow the front-runners as I’ve seen with Bradl who eventually took pole position.”

Source: HP Tuenti