Espargaro assesses "fantastic" Misano surface

Aleix Espargaro raved that the “new surface is fantastic” at Misano with the Spaniard having been one of the few riders to sample the track prior to this weekend’s race.

Having tested at Misano in July the Suzuki rider said that that the surface is “one of the best I ever tried. There are no bumps, just in one corner. The rest was good. Also we tested with more track temperature than in Malaysia and the grip was so high. I think the temperature was 62 degrees one day that we tested.”

There has been some areas of the track that riders have admitted to being concerned about with patches of asphalt leading to worries about a lack of grip under braking into turn eight. Espargaro however contended that there was no major issues to be expected this weekend.

“The grip was quite good so I think they did a good job. The only question mark is that it is so dark in case of rain it’s going to be difficult to understand which part is getting dry. It was definitely much better. I can’t wait to ride here. We’re new this year so we loose a lot of time every weekend to set up the bike and get the right settings. As we did a test here before the summer break we have some information.

“So I think we’re going to be closer. In the test we were competitive apart from Honda. The Honda was unbelievably fast but with Ducati we were quite close. I think we were around one second faster than the lap record. The problem was Honda was almost three seconds faster. We will see.