until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
KTM’s Valencia pole-winner Pol Espargaro will start the European Grand Prix as a clear favourite on race pace.
And a big part of the reason for that is because KTM deployed its secret weapon at the track last month, in the form of a test with three-time MotoGP world championship runner-up Dani Pedrosa.
The team rolled out earlier in the season at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo with Pedrosa for a regular mid-season test – but with only one session so far this weekend providing any sort of dry track time, the data gathered by the veteran Spaniard could well be key to success.
Sunday’s forecast offers the best weather of the weekend to date, meaning that the morning’s 20-minute warm-up session is likely to be the only chance most teams have to set up their machines ahead of jumping straight into the race.
That provides only a limited opportunity to make many changes both due to the length of the session and thanks to the expected cooler track temperatures in a session that happens a full four hours before the 27-lap race, and it means that KTM should have a distinct advantage when it comes to dialling in Espargaro’s machine.
That’s already been hinted at so far this weekend, too, with Espargaro showing impressive pace in the only real dry session of the weekend so far on Friday afternoon.
Starting on a damp track and with wet tyres but seeing conditions improve as the session progressed, he was able to put together what could be a race-winning advantage.
In fact, Espargaro was able to average well over half a second of an advantage on each of his fastest half-dozen laps of the session – something that will have his rivals worried, especially if he can pair that pace with a flying start.
And with a faint hope of championship aspirations still remaining – plus the chance to finally break his duck and win for KTM in one of only three races remaining with the team before switching to Honda, Espargaro is resolute about what the race strategy will be.
“There is no balance tomorrow – we will go for everything,” he declared on Saturday afternoon.
“There are only three races remaining, and we can get a good place in the standings if we have three amazing races.
“It means taking a lot of risk to be in the best position at the end of the race, and I can’t save anything from the first corner to the last.
“Maybe that will cost me a crash in one of the three races – but we can do something very interesting at the end of the year.
“I don’t know about Portimao because we’ve never raced there, but we have a good chance here and I’m going to take it.”
He isn’t the only rider on the front row with something of an advantage.
LCR Honda rider and Aragon polesitter Taka Nakagami admitted that he and his Honda engineers have dug out Marc Marquez’s settings from 2019 to plug into Nakagami’s year-old RC213V.
“Everyone is saying that we need to think about having no data for this weekend and that this will give some surprises,” said Nakagami.
“We need to see how tyre life lasts, because we don’t know about tyres, the fuel consumption, or the electronics.
“Thankfully I have Marc’s data from last year though, and he won the race here!
“Hopefully I can pick up some things from that, and we’ll see how it goes in warm-up.”
Not everyone is going into the first day of forecast dry track action at Valencia as upbeat as Espargaro and Nakagami.
Championship contender Andrea Dovizioso has what should be a similar advantage thanks to Ducati test rider Michele Pirro’s outing alongside Pedrosa – but with Dovizioso completely lost right now on the Desmosedici, he conceded that any data gathered by the test team is all but useless.
“We don’t really have any information, because the situation is different,” he said.
“When you have the chance to test at a track with your test rider before the race it’s always positive, if he is able to work on the tyres and get some feedback on the tyres, the power, the electronics.
“But he couldn’t really work on the tyres, the laptimes weren’t so fast and I think the situation at the test wasn’t that good.
“The thing is, it’s another thing compared to the past. I don’t have the feeling with the bike to go fast, so Michele can’t help me.
“Normally in these kinds of tests, he tries set-up, but it’s not like that anymore.
“In the past I was able to use the potential of the bike and my confidence and then use his information to find the way to work – but now I have no confidence with the bike, so all the other work doesn’t have a lot of point.”
