Pol Espargaro rides heroic Sepang race to finish sixth

Pol Espargaro made a truly heroic effort to power through the pain of the injury to his foot yesterday to clinch 6th in the tough MotoGP battle at Sepang today.

The reigning Moto2 World Champion fell heavily in yesterday’s FP3 session and fractured the second head of the metatarsal in his left foot. However he fought onwards and competed in the warm up today, where he finished in 14th place.

The Spanish rider began his race from 12th on the grid after bravely making the decision to contest the race, as even though he did not partake in the qualifying yesterday, his FP3 time which left him in 10th, allowed him direct entry into QP2.

Espargaro started the GP strongly and finished the first lap in 10th as he stayed determined to seize a top ten despite his injuries. With six laps having been completed, he had closed in on Yonny Hernandez and made the move one lap later, to impressively place him in 7th with 13 laps remaining around the 5543 metre circuit.

The rookie carried on his striking display to overtake Andrea Dovizioso on lap 18 to clinch 6th and he eventually crossed the finish line in this position after a highly notable show of perseverance.

His superb result today saw him move up to 6th in the world championship standings after the penultimate round in Malaysia.

Pol Espargaro
“The race today was a really tough one for me, but I am very happy to walk away from here with a 6th place finish and some more valuable championship points, which was a much better result than what we anticipated after yesterday. Apart from my physical conditions, today was also really hard because we didn’t compete in FP4 yesterday and so we lost a lot of valuable time to work on the setup. Yet, the team did an amazing job to prepare a really good bike and I must thank them for their continued work all weekend long. In the race itself, I just tried to run a consistent pace and finish. I really gave it absolutely everything that I had and it was very tough in the last ten laps as that’s when my foot started to hurt a lot with turning the bike being especially hard. However, I never gave up and am happy with the result as we collected some very important championship points which helped me to pass my brother to gain 6th position in the overall standings. Now I will rest up before the final race in Valencia where I will try to be as fast as possible to finish my rookie season on a high.”

Source: Tech3 Communications