KTM’s Pol Espargaro says that excessive rear tyre spinning during the Czech GP at Brno made it impossible to convert his top five starting position into a strong race result.
The Spaniard matched his best qualifying effort of the year at Brno, starting fifth for the race just like he did at the North American round at the Circuit of the Americas back in April.
He backed up team-mate Johann Zarco, who had taken the Austrian marque’s best ever qualifying result with third-their first ever premier class front-row start.
KTM’s collective qualifying result was a product of the tricky conditions though, and in the race both RC16’s struggled badly for pace, Espargaro slipping to 11th while Zarco fared even worse- falling to 14th by the line.
Espargaro explained that while his speed was comparable to the likes of Valentino Rossi’s factory Yamaha and Danilo Petrucci’s full-fat Ducati GP19 machine early on, he started to struggle as tyre wear became a factor.
“Overall the weekend was not so bad because yesterday we showed some good performance in the qualifying but yeah today the first laps, I managed to do a good start in the tricky conditions, and especially on the start as it was still a little bit wet,” began Espargaro.
“Then I managed to stay behind the top guys for a few laps, I lost one spot with Valentino and then I keep behind Valentino some laps, then I lose again to Cal and again to Petrucci.
“At the beginning of the race with the tyre quite fresh I could manage to stay with them but as soon as it started to drop I couldn’t do anything, I was spinning a lot and especially spinning on the straights so I couldn’t do much by the end of the race.”
Espargaro also said he was struggling to work out how to manage races with his RC16 bike, and that he hopes to find some improvements in this regard in the post-race test at the Czech circuit.
“It feels like if I push too much at the beginning then at the end I pay, then if I don’t push at the beginning I can’t push enough at the end to catch back. So I am a little bit tired, we have a full day of testing tomorrow to try and improve the problem.”
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