Aleix Espargaró had a race to forget at the Australian MotoGP. In contrast to his usual performance, the Aprilia was not competitive, and the rider finished in eighth place, more than nine seconds behind the leader.
This unexpected performance by the Spanish rider was attributed to difficulties with tyre spin, and he described the result as… embarrassing:
– It was embarassing today. We were not competitive, we had a lot of spin. I never expected to arrive ten seconds from the victory or de podium – nine seconds. The spin level we had this weekend was insane. I tried to manage the tyre. At the beginning I could go faster, sincerelly, but I knew I couldn’t make it to finish line, so I decided to start tyre saving. But even like this there were two or three laps that were dramatic.
According to Espargaró there were four points of the track where he lost more time, but he admitted that it wasn’t possible to be much faster in the whole race: ‘It was in 11/12 and two and six. These four corners… it’s crazy, I don’t understand why we spin like this. I don’t understand this lack of grip with this tyre all the weekend. With the soft I could go quite fast. But I said many times there are many circuits during the calendar in which the pure speed in one single lap it’s not really important – it’s more about the tyre saving, the managing. And there was nothing I could do really. I think it was impossible to go even half a second faster in the total race time today with an Aprilia’.