Pol Espargaró had a lot of difficulties this Sunday in MotoGP at Motegi in the long race due to track conditions that exacerbated a problem he felt on the bike, with it not performing as he wanted. In this way, when the flag was shown, the rider felt relieved.
For the athlete from GASGAS Factory Racing Tech3, there were greater difficulties than expected, he began by saying: ‘It was a complicated day. The start of the race was more complicated than I expected, in these conditions everything was crazy, too much. About the race, I don’t know what to say, I had a lot of difficulties, something tremendous and much greater than usual and usually in wet conditions I’m not too bad but this Sunday I had a lot of spin from the first gear to the sixth on the sixth.’
What he felt was mainly a great slowness and, when the conditions worsened and he headed for the pit, Espargaró admitted that he felt relieved: ‘Everyone was passing me in that area and I was very upset about it and it was a relief when we had the red flag because I was getting slower and slower.’
After the red flag and with the prospect of going back out on the track, the mechanics made some changes to the bike and everything apparently was resolved: ‘Then I changed the tire and when I returned to the track everything started working, so I believe that by changing the rear tire something changed on the bike and then I even had twice the acceleration than in the first race. It was very strange. We have to understand what happened and maybe the tire overheated too much in the first or second laps… I don’t know. Something happened on the bike.’
Remember that, after returning to the track, the organization ended up canceling the race since the rain did not let up and driving was extremely dangerous
