Espargaro makes up five points in title hunt with 4th place at Brno, Rabat finishes 7th, Pons 21st

Pol Espargaró finished the Czech Grand Prix in fourth place today, further reducing the points gap to championship leader Scott Redding who finished eighth.

Teammate Tito Rabat also made up a little ground with 7th place. Axel Pons crossed the finish line in 21st, not able to ride as he would like after struggling with setup issues all weekend.

4º POL ESPARGARÓ “The most positive thing about the weekend is that we made up five points on Scott. I am partly happy, because we could solve the problem with the tyres. I managed to set my fastest time in the last lap, which shows that the tyre finished in good condition. Today the problem was that I couldn’t pass the riders ahead. Nico was like a wall for me, I was hanging on to him, but I couldn’t get into his slipstream on the straight and overtake under braking. I gave my best, but I couldn’t do it until the last lap. In Enggland it will surely be a little more difficult, it is a track that I like, but we’re in “enemy territory”, so we have to use all our ammunition and get closer in the championship standings.”

7º TITO RABAT “At the beginning of the race I struggled a lot, so we have to see how we can improve this point. I also struggled a lot to overtake the riders in front. I had a bit of bumping on the rear wheel, but that wasn’t the problem. At least we finished in the leading group, seventh and 2.5 seconds behind. You can’t always win or be on the podium. I was expecting more from this race, so we have to keep working the way we are doing so far.”

21º AXEL PONS “We had a lot of problems throughout the weekend. We weren’t able to solve them and this shows in the race result. I had a lot of problems with the gears change as well, it was jumping gears. When puttig in sixth gear it jumped into fifth and I lost a lot of time there.”

Source: Pons Racing