As at every Grand Prix since the start of the season, Hervé Poncharal is kind enough to share with us his vision of the last race.
The one from Germany, combining good performance and good strategy from Pol Espargaro, was initially a source of hope, before the Granollers driver fell immediately after changing tires. A mistake that we usually describe as “beginner” and which, after the beautiful but frustrating 4th place in the Netherlands, led Hervé Poncharal to confide to us directly: " I'm upset ".
So we let about ten days pass before returning to these events where hope and disappointment were mixed.
Hervé, after the Sachsenring, you were very disappointed and we preferred to postpone this interview to allow a little time to pass. How do you see things today?
“They say time kills but time heals all wounds. Hotly, you can understand that, given the situation in MotoGP where obtaining a podium for a satellite team is oh so difficult, it is true that Assen and Sachsenring were two very special races, disrupted by the weather, and that it there was the possibility of aiming for that podium that all independent teams dream of.
This was done at Assen with the magnificent victory of Jack Miller, Redding finished third there, and we obtained the place of the c..., fourth.
But in Holland, I wasn't too disappointed, because Pol was intelligent and didn't want to tempt the devil. On the other hand, when we see the profile of the race in Germany, we can have huge regrets.
For understandable reasons, the Dovizioso-Rossi group was spinning and spinning, while the rain tires were completely destroyed and the trajectory was almost completely dry, while Marquez and Pol had the same feeling completely spontaneously and returned to the same moment after both setting off on soft rain tires. They were both sailing between 8th and 10th place and things weren't going very well, so they said to themselves that they had to take the gamble of going back if they wanted to do anything.
We knew afterwards that it was really the right moment because Marquez then forgot everyone and wandered around until the end of the race.
So when you see what happened, you can only have regrets, because, even if I hate to say "with ifs" because the race is the race, almost certainly, we were second!
Pol has never made a podium in MotoGP, it was perhaps the last chance of the 2016 season, perhaps... and it's true that it's a bit frustrating because everyone gave a lot of effort during the first part of the season, and we always come up against the 4 or 5 tenors who are on the factory bikes. And when there is an opportunity and a small window like that, and what's more, you seized it well...
There you go, I had a bit of a problem for these reasons. Now it's the race, we have to accept it, and this is where we see that Marquez is also very strong not only in driving, that we knew, but now manages to completely master himself. He came out relatively early on front and rear slicks, he managed to tap into them to get them up to speed from the start but without taking too many risks, and the performance was really good in terms of driving, but also in terms of mental management.
We lacked that a little, because the performance was there; Pol had ridden very hard since he had the 5th time, he was almost always the first Yamaha in the dry and in the wet, and at the crucial moment, well there you go, he made a little mistake that perhaps was better management of his nerves, his emotions and his impulses would have made it possible to change the result.
Now, even if he interrupts his streak of consecutive races where he has scored points since the start of the season, as he said, he remains 6th and first satellite driver.
That's how it is, that's life, we've already experienced more severe disappointments and it's not catastrophic. »
