Superb start to Pol Espargaro’s Aragon weekend

Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team rider Pol Espargaro signalled his intent for the weekend by completing the opening day of practice forcefully in 6th place in front of his home crowd at the MotorLand Aragon circuit.

The reigning Moto2 World Champion began the day by finishing in 8th position with a best time of 1’50.120 which saw him miss the second row by only 0.178 of a second after running strongly throughout the practice.

The 23 year old rider continued his forward momentum into the afternoon as track temperatures increased and powered to a best lap of 1’48.966. This time was just behind the 3rd placed rider by only two tenths of a second and was set on his third lap as he also posted the quickest Yamaha speed of 334.4 kmh.

The superb start leaves the young rookie poised for success at Aragon and tomorrow he will aim to qualify inside the top six in front of his passionate fans and then blaze to a competitive result in the 23 lap dash on Sunday.

Pol Espargaro
“Today was a really positive way to kick of the weekend for me. My feeling with the bike was good from the word go, which could partly be due to the fact that I’ve ridden a lot of races here, but for whatever reason all the movements felt truly natural. I was able to run competitive lap times which kept me on the virtual podium for the majority of the session this afternoon, but still I think Valentino and Jorge’s rhythm might be a bit stronger and for sure they will get up to speed tomorrow. Also we still have some margin to improve and I’m looking forward to trying the softer tyre compound in FP3 or 4 as we just ran the harder compound today. I know the situation in qualifying will not be an easy one due to the tyre difference with the Ducati’s and the open class bikes but I’m really looking forward to the race on Sunday and I hope that all of our hard work will pay off.”

Source: Tech3 Communications