Aleix Espargaró was forced to abandon today’s MotoGP long race due to lack of strength in his left foot. The Spanish rider explained that he had a lot of pain in the morning, but that was not what determined his premature end of the race, and he recalled that yesterday, after the incident with Miguel Oliveira and Enea Bastianini, he immediately felt that something was wrong.
After six laps, the Aprilia Racing rider abandoned the main race of the weekend and admitted to the intense pain beforehand: ‘I have a very important fracture in the fibula, but the problem is not the fracture itself, it’s that everything is filled with blood, the ligaments, the muscles, everything, it was like a behavioral sensation. I took a drug bomb to avoid the pain because it was impossible to ride with so much pain this morning’.
Still, during the race itself, it wasn’t the pain that forced him to withdraw, as he explained afterwards: ‘During the race, I didn’t have pain, but I had no strength in my foot because everything was filled with blood, my foot was completely blocked, and I decided to stop because it was impossible to shift gears up or down’.
And he recalled the incident with the Portuguese rider from the CrytoDATA RNF MotoGP Team: ‘It’s a shame because I felt very strong since Friday here, and yesterday when Miguel hit me with a lot of force in the leg, I immediately realized that something was fractured. I will try again in Valencia if it’s possible’.