Aleix Espargaro faces grip, chatter, and balance issues on Qualifying day in Texas

Saturday proved a demanding day at the COTA for Aleix Espargaro. The Aprilia rider and his teammate, who had done two good practice sessions on Friday, found completely different grip conditions ahead of Qualifying. The lack of feeling conditioned preparation for the qualifiers, forcing both to go through the Q1 selection session.

For Aleix, the greatest difficulties were due to the balance of the RS-GP, with a troublesome chattering and poor grip. Despite using different tyres in terms of compound, the Spanish rider was unable to be incisive and will have to settle for the first spot on the seventh row of the starting grid.

ALEIX ESPARGARO
“It was a very strange day. Yesterday we were fast, but today I hardly recognised my bike. We gave it our all in qualifying, but in spite of it we were not able to get close to the top ten, which is a goal that we knew was within our potential. The lack of grip and strong chattering at the front end slowed me down today. We’ll try to figure out why these problems came up so we can get back in the right direction. After all, the potential is there. Yesterday I was able to be fast and Scott was also competitive.”