Pol Espargaro lines up 11th on Indy grid

Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team rider Pol Espargaro will contest the second American round of the 2015 MotoGP World Championship from 11th on the grid after a tricky qualifying practice in Indianapolis.

The Spaniard began his day with a solid performance in FP3 by setting a lap of 1’32.945 which he was due to improve further, but he unfortunately fell at the end of the practice.

This meant his earlier time saw him finish the session in 8th and able to progress straight through to QP2. When the qualifying started, the 24 year old pulled the pin and set a 1’32.670 on only his second lap.

Espargaro concluded the 15 minute shoot out with this time as his personal best, which will see him start the race from the middle of the fourth row, with a gap of less than half a second from third position. Nevertheless, the 2013 Moto2 World Champion remains fully confident of being able to climb through the field tomorrow and clinch a high scoring finish aboard the Yamaha YZR-M1.

Pol Espargaro
“Without a doubt I can’t be satisfied with this qualifying result. During the practice sessions we always had a strong rhythm with the harder compound of tyre but as soon as I put the soft one in and tried to push for a fast lap time, my confidence with the bike dropped significantly. I didn’t feel comfortable nor did I enjoy riding the bike and my movements on it were not natural. It went as far as thinking that I would crash in nearly every corner which has happened twice already this weekend. However, fortunately our situation for the race looks to be more competitive even if I haven’t given myself an easy task from 11th place on the grid as I personally think that the starting position counts as more or less 40% of the result. Still, I will give it my all tomorrow and try to climb back to the positions that I want to be in.”

Source: Tech3 Communications