During the first day of testing in Valencia before the final race of the MotoGP World Championship this Sunday, Aleix Espargaró finished outside the provisional top 10 after a particularly competitive FP2.
Although the Aprilia rider made significant progress compared to the morning session, he concluded the latter, faster, in thirteenth position, after suffering a fall at turn 5 which forced him to change bikes, thus hindering his efforts to climb into the top 10 after 10 minutes.
Currently third in the general classification of the championship, the Catalan was therefore surpassed by Enea Bastianini, who is only one point behind him in the general classification for third place on the podium.
Everything was therefore postponed to the FP3 session on Saturday morning, which will determine the top ten who will go directly to the Q2 qualifying session. The ranking, as is tradition at the Valencia circuit, is extremely close, with the top fifteen riders all eight tenths of each other, leaving the door open for the Aprilia rider to come back.
Aleix Espargaró : " To be honest, I think our level is better than what the ranking shows. Anyway, we are not super fast because we have a lot of grip problems at the rear, like in the last races. It's difficult to understand what's going on at Aprilia. First of all, we need to understand what happened in this latter part of the season. We were strong in the first part of the season, one of our drivers was always on the podium, but at the end it was a disaster. Then we need more power. And the third point is grip on the rear wheel. We're not able to put weight on the rear to generate grip, so we pay that on the brakes because we can't use engine braking. We just don't have the grip when accelerating. But we can improve tomorrow, enough to be in the top 10. The crash with my first moto certainly slowed me down and that was the last thing I needed, partly because we are moving forward with two ratings quite different RS-GP units. There are positives and negatives to both setups, so the goal is to put together the good things we found today and try to put together the best possible package. »
Grand Prix FP2 results MotoGP of the Valencian Community on the Ricardo Tormo circuit:
Credit ranking: MotoGP.com
