Pol Espargaro disappointed after difficult Argentine qualifying

Pol Espargaro endured a tricky qualifying campaign in Argentina to post a lap time of 1’39.808, leaving him in 18th position on the grid for Sunday’s 25 lap dash.

The young Spaniard began the day by finishing the FP3 session in 11th place but just 0.014 of a second behind the final Q2 position which meant he had to partake in qualifying 1.

Here, the 2014 rookie of the year executed a fully determined effort on the challenging circuit, yet still wasn’t able to lower his lap time enough to participate in qualifying session 2.

Now, the 23 year old Spaniard looks ahead to tomorrow where he will aim to undertake a strong start and then climb through the field to a top ten position.

Pol Espargaro
“It goes without saying that I am far from satisfied with how things went today. We concentrated a lot on our race rhythm and tried both compounds of tyre in the initial two free practice sessions plus we completed many laps with the extra hard one and I’m convinced that my pace is pretty good. It was a pity that we couldn’t go straight through to QP2 and that we missed it by just 0.014 of a second. Also, we were close to the factory bikes who were just three tenths away. Nevertheless, I was still confident as we have known since the beginning of the season that this type of situation could happen during the year as the level is really similar and the manufacturers who are allowed to use the softer tyres have improved their bikes a lot. However, unfortunately the session was a disaster. We need to analyse what exactly happened as when I went out for my second run, which was the one where I planned to do a time attack, I realised that it was impossible to ride fast with the bike like this. To be honest, I do not know what was wrong, but I couldn’t even come close to setting my fastest time of the weekend. To kick off the race from 18th is not good news at all and I will need a lot of patience plus a well thought out plan to make up the positions. It will be difficult for sure but until we started this session, my feelings here were positive. Now I need to be confident that we can turn the weekend around tomorrow.”

Source: Tech3 Communications