Espargaro staying calm and confident despite struggling to find his pace in qualifying
The MotoGP class found itself in the same position as Moto3 on Saturday, enjoying a dry session for qualifying after contesting every previous practice run in the wet. Dani Pedrosa took the most advantage of the conditions, dominating the run and taking pole by 18 thousandths of a second from title rival Jorge Lorenzo. With ten minutes remaining, Lorenzo had the provisional top spot but after turns for Bradl and Crutchlow, Pedrosa usurped them all on his final lap. Pedrosa and Lorenzo will continue their title fight tomorrow at Misano, with Bradl and Crutchlow looking to act as spoilers.
Despite having barely ridden this weekend thanks to adverse weather, Randy De Puniet continued to be the reference rider of the CRT competitors. The Frenchman only had teammate Aleix Espargaró as a rival in the final stage of the qualifying session as he qualified twelfth overall. Both POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar complained about a lack of grip with the rear of their ART machines, spending much of the session trying out improvements. There was no definitive solution found, but the duo were nonetheless the best of the new sub-class on Saturday. Espargaró placed fourteenth on the grid. The two have a warm up session tomorrow morning in which to look for further steps forward.
14th Aleix Espargaró 1.36.284 (22 laps): “Today I had difficulties finding my pace in qualifying. We lost a lot of time this weekend due to the weather and today we still had work to do going into qualifying. At the start of the session we had a lot of problems with rear grip. I was unable to make the bike turn as I would have liked. We tried a lot of solutions out. In any case, I am calm because we are in a good position and I know that my team will continue pushing as much as necessary to give us a definitive solution. Despite not being comfortable, my pace wasn’t bad and I think that with a small step forward we can be up there with Randy. We have to look at the telemetry later and see what we are lacking.”
Source: Aspar Team Press Release
