Pol Espargaro hoping for top 6 finish at Sachsenring

Pol Espargaro today accomplished a successful qualifying campaign to clinch 8th position on the grid for tomorrow’s 30-lap eni Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland at the famous Sachsenring circuit.

The young Spanish rider began the day by running competitively in the morning session and consistently improving his lap times until an unfortunate fall at the rapid turn 11 close to the end of the practice. However his lap of 1’22.101 was strong enough to seal 8th place in the combined standings which saw him progress through to Q2.

The unpredictable weather this week in Saxony struck again as rain fell just before FP4, yet the sun shone through for the dry qualifying session.

During the 15 minute shootout, the premier class rookie battled onwards to produce a best lap time of 1’21.771, which was merely four tenths of a second from the front row and leaves the reigning Moto2 World Champion confident of challenging some of the Factory MotoGP riders tomorrow.

Pol Espargaro
“Of course 8th is not where we wanted to finish but I think we were close to our maximum with this performance, I was just two tenths away from the fastest Factory Yamaha which shows how tricky things are. Plus I had a big fall this morning where I made a mistake in turn ten and then lost the front of the bike in the following corner, but luckily no injuries were caused. Aside from this, I am happy because we improved the braking stability from yesterday and this is where we gain a lot of time, however there is still some work to be done to make the acceleration better as this is where we are struggling at the moment. For sure tomorrow will be a challenging race due to the narrow, twisting nature of the circuit so a strong start is vital to success here and I would be really happy if we scored a top six finish.”

Source: Tech3 Communications