Espargaro held up by traffic in Assen qualifying but satisfied with race setup

A rain-interrupted qualifying practice at Assen this afternoon decided the grid positions for tomorrow’s Dutch TT, with the riders limited to their pit garages for much of the session before a desperate rush for lap times in the final fifteen minutes. Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso held the top positions up to that point but an opportunist attack from Casey Stoner sealed a late pole position for the Australian.

POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar pair Randy De Puniet and Aleix Espargaró once again set the pace amongst the CRT bikes and the Frenchman and the Spaniard are looking forward to the challenge of trying to beat each other tomorrow, as well as the possibility of fighting with more than one MotoGP prototype. Randy qualified twelfth fastest, half a second behind Héctor Barberá, with Aleix just a couple of tenths and one grid position behind him.

13th Aleix Espargaró 1.36.007 (14 laps): “We started the afternoon session very well and I was able to step my pace up from free practice in the opening couple of laps, which I don’t tend to do. On my last lap I ran into some traffic so I wasn’t able to improve any further but I am happy with the job done and the most important thing today is our race pace. It has been one of the best weekends of the year so far so hopefully we can follow it up in the race tomorrow, although I know Randy will make life difficult for me. I have unfinished business because I wanted to set a 1’35 today so I’ll be trying hard to do that tomorrow.”

Source: Aspar Team Press Release