Pol Espargaro pleased with qualifying 7th at Misano

Pol Espargaro surged to 7th position in today’s qualifying challenge which will see him begin tomorrow’s Misano Grand Prix from the head of the 3rd row.

The young Spaniard began the day positively in perfect weather conditions as the sun shone down in Italy and he went straight through to Q2 after clinching 9th in FP3. The rookie then embarked on the Q2 session with speed from the word go and powered to a best time of 1’33.557 on his 6th lap.

His time was stunningly only three tenths of a second from the pole position. Furthermore, the fact that the reigning Moto2 World Champion clocked the quickest sector time in T4 impressively underlines how rapidly he was able to adapt, having ridden less than 90 minutes of dry track time aboard the Yamaha YZR-M1 on this circuit.

Espargaro now looks forward to tomorrow’s race where he will aim to challenge as the leading satellite MotoGP bike once again to strengthen his 7th place in the World Championship standings in his rookie season.

Pol Espargaro
“Considering that we just had one day of dry track time, I’m really satisfied with our qualifying performance. We have been truly fast plus a gap of just 3 tenths to the pole position is something we should be quite proud of. However, we could have been even higher up the grid but I made some mistakes in sector 1 and 2 on my fast lap which definitely cost me a lot of time. We have to be confident for tomorrow as the start will be crucial due to it being difficult to overtake at this circuit. I’m still a bit unsure about our race pace as due to the conditions we could not try a lot of laps with the same tyres, so tomorrow morning’s warm up will be another important occasion for me to try a few more adjustments in order to be as prepared as possible for the 28 lap sprint.”

Source: Tech3 Communications