Pol Espargaro qualifies fifteenth at rain-hit Silverstone

Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team rider Pol Espargaro battled against the British weather to qualify on the fifth row for the round 12 fight at the high-speed Silverstone circuit.

The Spaniard began the day by completing 18 laps in FP3, which was more than any other MotoGP rider as he determinedly continued adjusting the setup of his Yamaha YZR-M1. Despite his best efforts, he finished the session in 11th which meant that he just missed out on the cut off point for Q2 by 0.110.

Later on, the expected rain fell and the Tech3 riders had to contest the remaining practices in wet and windy conditions. Nevertheless, when QP1 commenced, Espargaro got straight to work as he dodged the rain before producing his quickest time of 2’18.871 on the penultimate lap.

This performance leaves the 25-year-old in 15th for the start of tomorrow’s 20 lap sprint as the leading satellite rider in the championship standings remains fully confident of clinching a top 10 result.

Pol Espargaro
“It hasn’t been too positive today and now we have a bit of a challenge tomorrow after the tricky qualifying. Fortunately, the FP3 session was completely dry, so we were able to take advantage of the track time where we tried to find some solutions to the issues that we were struggling with yesterday. However, as the temperature was quite low, we couldn’t find the information that we needed. At the end of the practice, I pushed as hard as I could in order to qualify for QP2, but similarly to yesterday, I finished just outside the top ten. I had another rider in front of me, and he made a mistake in the last sector which ended up disturbing me and so I had to cancel my lap. This was a big shame because qualifying one was going to be tough anyway, but like I imagined, it also turned out to be wet. In the damp, my feeling was not the best and we were struggling with the front half of the M1, just like in FP4. The bike seemed to be floating and at the end of the session, the tyre felt like it was brand new. In addition, I also think that we have a large margin of improvement to make in the acceleration department. In Q1, I pushed as hard as I could but things didn’t turn out too positively and as a result, I have to start quite far back tomorrow. With unpredictable weather forecast, I’m not sure what to expect, and of course, I haven’t given myself an easy task with the grid position. Yet, I am confident that in the warm up, we will have the same conditions as the race, so we need to take advantage of the track time in order to refine a few things so that we can be as competitive as possible in the afternoon.”

Source: Tech3