Rain costs Espargaro valuable time in test

Today’s post Catalan Grand Prix test was marred  by difficult conditions and it was the exact opposite of what Pol Espargaro needed after a difficult weekend as he continues to search for the form that saw him open his rookie campaign. Whereas his Tech3 teammate, Bradley Smith, has been growing in confidence all year Espargaro admitted on Sunday to feeling lost.

With the rain ruining the opportunities for productive running today Espargaro was limited to 19 laps and afterwards he said that they had made a small improvement with the settings.

“We did just 19 laps, not really much to test a lot of things,” said the Spaniard. “We test two things, one of them was not good, one of them was good, we improve a little bit. Then the rain comes, impossible to make one fast lap time, impossible to make a rhythm, impossible to make anything. Looking to go to Assen to continue, because it was a disaster today.

“We improve on stopping the bike, we had problems all weekend stopping the bike, and also this makes less turning. So we improved it, but by the end of this 19 laps, but I think it was not enough info to realize it was good or was bad, or even to make a good lap time. I didn’t ride fast, so by the end, nothing changed.”

Having had one of the most disappointing weekend’s of his career in front of his home crowd Espargaro is now looking forward to Assen in two weeks time.

“I don’t know. For sure next weekend everything will change, new track, new aspects of the asphalt, new corners. Everything will change and can happen that the bike will be really good there. So by the end we have to improve the problems where we have the problems. We had no time to improve the problems here. OK, if the bike is not good there, we will have to try there what we tried here what was good this morning, more or less.”