Aleix Espargaró heads into the Malaysian GP this weekend, marking the penultimate race of his MotoGP career. The Aprilia rider currently holds tenth place in the championship standings.
The Spaniard commented before the event: ‘Hopefully I can have a good one. It’s my second-to-last race, so I will try to have fun. It’s a special place, because we come here many, many times. I remember a long time ago, when I was very young, that we used to come here also for Sepang 1 and Sepang 2 tests. So, there are a lot of memories. I will just try to have as much fun as possible’.
Despite the struggles he faced in Sepang in 2023, Espargaró is drawing confidence from this past February’s test: ‘Last year I struggled a lot. It’s true that I also crashed three or four times, so that makes the weekend super difficult. But overall, we were quite fast in the winter test, so hopefully I can repeat that’.
The tyres have changed, and the #41 rider acknowledged this as another factor requiring adaptation: ‘Michelin has changed the tyres, we have three compounds, we have what they call a new technology, so I will try to adapt to it and see if it is much different or not’.