Aleix Espargaró had no reason to smile at the end of Sunday’s race in Spielberg, and despite finishing in the points, by securing ninth place, he suffered from various issues during the race.
The Spanish rider from Aprilia Racing started by listing some of the problems: ‘I didn’t have brakes from the beginning. The start wasn’t bad, but I lost places to Enea [Bastianini] and the KTMs [of Jack Miller and Brad Binder], and behind them, the temperature was very, very high. Yesterday we were on the limit, but today behind them – besides the pressure and temperature of the front tire – the temperature of the carbon fiber was beyond extremely high, we reached a new record, and I had no brakes throughout the entire race so… I tried to stop the bike with the rear, but it was very slow.’
The discomfort was such that, unlike previous occasions, he couldn’t take advantage of the high-temperature situation or the tire choice, which influences the bike’s behavior: ‘In our system, everything is very close, and we are usually the ones with the highest front pressure due to the temperature, and that’s why I managed to use the hard tire in Silverstone, and I was the only one, because I put a lot of temperature, and that’s an advantage in very hot conditions, but when we have this temperature, it’s a big problem, I had no brakes at all […]’.
He then explained how he dealt with this problem: ‘Braking very early and using the rear a lot with sliding, but of course going very slow: I went into the green part of the track three or four times and lost many positions while braking. It was a nightmare. I was very fast this morning [in the Warm Up], especially with the medium rear tire, and I expected to have a good race, but there was nothing I could do.’
And he concluded, without forgetting his teammate who was faster than him, with merit of his own: ‘Maverick was faster than me. I tried to be as clean and fast as possible, but I was braking super early, so it was just a matter of time [before he passed him]’.