Aleix Espargaro 9th on opening day at Aragon

The late Spanish summer sun was shining on the Motorland circuit in Aragón today and the heat was rising on track in more ways than one as Jorge Lorenzo continued his quest to close the gap to championship leader Marc Márquez after victory for the current World Champion in the last two races. Lorenzo started out strongest with the fastest lap of the first free practice this morning but Márquez responded in the second session this afternoon and lapped inside Casey Stoner’s circuit record of 1’49.046.

Whilst his superb pace at Misano didn’t come as much of a surprise POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar rider Aleix Espargaró certainly raised eyebrows today at Aragon, where the CRT bikes lose out notably to the factory MotoGP prototypes down the long straight. Aleix was the fastest CRT rider in both sessions but his lap time of 1’50.055 was less than a second off the pace of Marquez, an incredible achievement considering that this is one of the longest laps on the calendar.

9th Aleix Espargaró 1.50.055 (28 laps):
“I am really happy with the way the day ended. We had some issues this morning with rear grip but the guys made a couple of changes over lunch and that allowed us to go much faster in the afternoon. We put the soft tyre in and I did two really fast laps, closing the gap to the top to less than a second. We know we can do those times on the soft tyre but the job tomorrow is to improve our pace in race trim on the hard tyres. We will keep working as hard as we did today and hopefully come up with a race pace and grid position that will allow us to be competitive on Sunday.”

Source: Aspar Media