Pol Espargaró participated in his second wildcard appearance of the MotoGP season at the Austrian GP, finishing in the points with an 11th place. However, more important than the results were the insights gained from the latest updates to the KTM RC16.
The Spaniard clarified that the results weren’t as strong as in testing, but he considers his mission accomplished: ‘My job was to ride the bike as fast as possible to get information, not crashing, get information, take some data and compare for example with the test we did. For sure our results were not as good as in the test, but when you put the bike with Pirelli rubber after the Moto2 race and together with another bikes on track, it’s much more stressful. But we got some data and at the end this is the important’.
When asked if there were clearer ideas about the development direction to follow, Espargaró confirmed: ‘Yes, sure. When you get information, good or bad, information is always important and interesting to analyze. For sure we want to be competitive, but I think in this race Aprilia wanted to be more competitive, KTM wanted to be more competitive, Yamaha and Honda wanted to be more competitive compared to Ducati’.
The #44 also mentioned that despite facing problems with two bikes, there are positives to take from the Austrian GP: ‘The truth is that we ended up all the laps, we got a lot of data, we tested a lot of things. We had big problems on two bikes on Friday, so we ended up Saturday and Sunday with just one bike and we finished two days with just one bike, without mistakes. And this is also important, so the tests were very good and I’m pleased with that. We take the positives’.