Pol Espargaro had enjoyed an ultra-positive first impression of the Honda RC213V in pre-season testing, declaring that it already looked like the bike that most suits him on the MotoGP grid.
And though he’d had two crashes on the first Friday of the season as he returned to the bike, the KTM convert remained fairly ecstatic with the situation, as he snuck into a provisional Q2 spot at champion Joan Mir’s expense.
But though the eventual 12th place on the grid came as no disaster on Saturday, it marked the first day since joining Honda as Marc Marquez’s new team-mate that Espargaro seemed genuinely downbeat with the pace and the work that had been accomplished.
“Not fast enough”
Espargaro’s two flying laps in the second run of Q2 were 1m53.930s and 1m53.931s. He’d enjoyed the consistency, but lamented not being able to match fellow Honda rider Takaaki Nakagami, who qualified one place and two tenths ahead.
“I have to say, by the end the feelings in the last run were good,” Espargaro said. “But, I don’t know why, I think I lost a little bit the way today.
“We had different problems on the bike and I was not able to solve them in time, and in qualifying it was too late.
“On the second tyre I changed something and everything started to work better. I’ve been the second Honda today in the fast laptimes, but even like that still far from Taka.
“He did a good laptime and we should be able to do that, and I was not fast enough today.”
Mistakes cascading
So how exactly did Espargaro “lose his way”, considering the MotoGP field has now accrued six days of mileage at the Losail International Circuit in March?
“We were trying different things, different tyres, and still I’m learning,” he explained. “And sometimes I want to over-push to make the laptime.
“And I make a mistake, and this makes me nervous, then I make another mistake, and then I push too much, and you know, it’s my problem and I need to solve it.
“Also sometimes it happens that when you make so many laps in one place, with trying different things and trying too much, overthinking, you lose the way, and I did it today.
“Hopefully tomorrow it’s going to be a better one.”
FP4 “very, very bad” – but the race doesn’t have to be
Perhaps a more worrying sign was that Espargaro looked out of sorts in FP4, struggling for pace in the session used for race simulations, and finishing a lowly 19th despite having started the session on fresh tyres.
“I was a little bit confused in FP4,” Espargaro recalled. “It was very, very bad for me, especially my problems that I had, I was not able to stop the bike. And this made me a little bit confused.”
Despite this, the Honda newcomer believes this needn’t translate into a painful Sunday. But only if he manages a good warm-up session – in which he plans to ride with a full fuel tank.
“We’re going to start with today’s [second Q2] tyre that made me feel very good and today’s bike from the last run of qualifying,” he said of his warm-up plan.
“If everything’s good tomorrow morning, I think we’re still set for a good race.
“Just keep checking the laptimes – if I’m on the top tomorrow morning, it means the race is going to be good.
“If tomorrow morning I’m not in the top positions, maybe I’m going to suffer a little more.
“But I’m focused, I think it’s going to be a good race, I have the feeling, so I’m going to go for it.”
