Espargaro's brutal Dutch TT weekend ends in withdrawal

Factory Aprilia MotoGP racer Aleix Espargaro and his wildcarding colleague Lorenzo Savadori will not compete in Sunday’s Dutch TT at Assen, following crashes for both in Saturday’s sprint race.

Espargaro fell at the penultimate corner in the final laps of the sprint as he prepared an overtake for fifth against VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, crashing out heavily at the fast turn and suffering a break to the fifth metacarpal of his hand.

After he was taken to local hospital for further examination, it was originally announced by his Aprilia team that he would try and ride in Sunday morning’s warm-up session and then assess his condition afterwards - but a U-turn followed mere minutes before that session was set to get underway.

Espargaro - who had already had a bad fall on Friday that had left him with no fractures but "a lot of pain" in his lower back and neck - will now sit out the warm-up and the race in order to speed up his recovery.

He will presumably seek to race in next weekend's German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring.

His squadmate Savadori came off worse in his sprint crash - suffering multiple fractured vertebrae when he fell off camera in the sprint race.

Thankfully at no risk of spinal damage thanks to the nature of the breaks, it nonetheless suggests that he may require considerable time to return to race fitness.

Aprilia will be represented in the Dutch TT by Espargaro's team-mate Maverick Vinales - who was on the podium in the sprint on Saturday - and Trackhouse riders Miguel Oliveira and Raul Fernandez.