Pol Espargaro had a hard time this sunday in MotoGP at Motegi in the long race due to track conditions that exacerbated a problem he was experiencing with his bike, which wasn’t developing as he wanted. So when the flag was shown, the rider felt relieved.
For the GASGAS Factory Racing Tech3 rider, there were more difficulties than expected, he began by saying: ‘It was a complicated day. The start of the race was more tricky than I expected, in these conditions and everything was crazy, too much so. About the race I don’t know what to say, I had a lot of difficulties, something tremendous and much bigger than usual and normally in wet conditions I’m not too bad but this Sunday I had a lot of spin from first gear to sixth on friday’.
What he felt was mainly a lot of slowing down and, when the conditions worsened and he headed for the box, Espargaro admitted he felt relieved: ‘Everyone was overtaking me in that area and I was very annoyed about it and it was a relief when we had the red flag because I was going slower and slower’.
After the red flag and with the prospect of going out on the track again, the mechanics made some changes to the bike and everything was apparently sorted: ‘Then I changed the tyre and when I got back on the track and everything started working, so I believe that by changing the rear tyre something changed on the bike and then I even had twice as much acceleration as in the first race. It was very strange. We have to understand what happened and maybe I overheated the tyre on the first or second lap… I don’t know. Something happened to the bike’.
It’s worth remembering that, after returning to the track, the organisation called off the race because the rain didn’t let up and it was extremely dangerous to ride.