No feeling for Espargaro

Pol Espargaro struggled throughout the first night in Qatar with the Tech3 rider having a miserable day with a lack of feeling on the front end leaving him at a loss to explain his performance. The Spaniard, now in his second year in the premier class, said that he had no concept of the limit in Qatar such was the feedback coming from the bike.

“It was very strange because the feeling wasn’t the best,” said Espargaro. “It’s strange coming here for the first day after Malaysia and not feeling good but I think that also the laptimes weren’t fast. I’m quote surprised to be so far from the top guys. We still have two days to improve on the bike.

“I couldn’t feel the front and the problem with that is that I don’t feel the limit and I don’t know if I’m braking at 70%, 50% or 90% and it’s difficult to work like this so we’ll need to test some things to try and improve this.”

Over the next two days Espargaro will need to improve this because while the pre-season started strongly in Sepang 1 he struggled at the second test and was ultimately outpaced by his teammate, Bradley Smith,  so finding improvements with the setup will be key to hitting the ground running when the season starts in two weeks time.