Aleix Espargaró was possibly one of the riders that ended sunday’s race more frustated. The cause? A problem, he believes, with his rear tyre as it was ‘frozen’, as he said before. He also considered the chance of this being his mistake, but all he wants to understand is how from one day to another, there is such a difference.
If it was his own mistake, due to changes in his riding style, Espargaró assumes he won’t have any issue in saying it is… if that theory is proved: ‘If they prove it to me, I will accept it. I have no problem saying: «I rode differently» because it shows. They have all my telemetry and if that is the case… hopefully, then I can learn. I have a very good relationship with Piero [Taramasso], with my Michelin technicians, and I will work to understand it’.
The rider then recalled the big difference to the race winner: ‘It can’t be that on the same circuit on Saturday I was lapping in the 52s medium, half a second ahead of Pecco, and this Sunday I’m 11 seconds behind him. It is impossible’.
For the #41, the fact he finished on the podium on saturday even makes things feel worse: ‘I don’t know if it’s good or even more frustrating, it’s the Sprint. Before you could go out on Sunday and it wouldn’t work, and they would blame you because with the medium tyre you didn’t have a good pace. But now it’s not like that, because now you have the Saturday race. And in Saturday’s race I proved to be very competitive, especially in the second part of the race’.
His performance was far on the long race: ‘This Sunday I wasn’t even able to get close to those lap times, the bike seemed different. It’s not normal for Pecco to take 11 seconds off me when the day before I passed him and took a second off him in two laps. There is something there that we have to understand’.