Pol Espargaro finishes as leading Yamaha in Japanese GP

Pol Espargaro delivered a strong performance in front of 52,000 passionate fans at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit to seize 6th in his 50th MotoGP race with the Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team.

The Spaniard sped away from the rear of the third row of the grid when the event began and after navigating his way around the stop and go track on the first lap, he crossed the line in 8th, having improved on his qualifying position by one place. From here, the 25-year-old quickly set into a strong rhythm, which saw him open up a gap to the pursuing riders as he tried to hunt down Cal Crutchlow in front of him.

At the midpoint of the 24 lap sprint, the 2013 Moto2 World Champion was up to 7th as he maintained his consistency whilst he pushed on as the distance counted down. After producing a tireless effort right until the end of the demanding race, Espargaro met the chequered flag in 6th which marks a solid conclusion to the round 15 battle.

Pol Espargaro
“It has been a tough day and it is important that we could take 10 points from this race, especially as it was a tricky GP but I am still a bit disappointed because we were not as competitive as we possibly could have been this weekend. I didn’t feel really comfortable in any of the practice sessions so I always knew it was going to be a long event. However, my start was good and I was able to stay in front of the Ducatis which I think was the key to our result. After the beginning, I couldn’t stay with the group who were ahead of me and I ran almost the entire Grand Prix on my own. Yet, with the crashes in front, we managed to finish in 6th, so we have to be happy about leaving Motegi with some crucial points for the independent rider fight in the Championship standings. Now, I’m really looking forward to Australia as the Phillip Island track is one that I really enjoy riding at and I have a lot of good memories there.”

Source: Tech3