Aleix Espargaro banks hot lap as insurance against Le Mans weather

Not only has the new MotoGP qualifying format intensified the track action on a Saturday but today’s free practice sessions at Le Mans showed how it can provide extra entertainment even on a Friday.

With local weather forecasts predicting rain tomorrow the teams and riders were keen not to waste a single second today as they banked fast laps in order to secure automatic qualification for Q2, which is reserved for the top ten riders on the combined free practice timesheets. There was close action at the top of the order too, Dani Pedrosa setting the pace but with Márquez, Rossi and Lorenzo all within 0.166 seconds of the Spaniard.

POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar rider Aleix Espargaró met his target, securing the tenth fastest time to guarantee qualification for Q2 should the forecasts be correct. Once again he was the fastest CRT rider on track but even more impressive is the fact that he is only a second off the pace of Pedrosa. Four tenths and three positions further back was his team-mate Randy De Puniet, the Frenchman hoping for continued dry weather tomorrow as he targets front end improvements on his ART machine.

10th Aleix Espargaró 1.35.045 (36 laps):
“I am really happy with the job we have done on this first day because in recent years Le Mans hasn’t been a good track for me. Last year I was two seconds behind Randy in qualifying but this year we have started out really well. You need to get the bike stopped here because there are so many hard braking zones but we have found a good compromise with the bike in this area this season. I am happy because we are well prepared in case it rains tomorrow. If it does then we will go straight through to Q2. There are a lot of second gear corners here and we need to play around with the ratios a little bit to get the setting just right but we are on the pace, things are going well and we don’t want to start wasting time by making unnecessary changes.”

Source: Aspar Media