ESPARGARÓ AND REDDING TO START FROM THE SEVENTH ROW IN THE GP OF GERMANY
ALEIX PENALISED SIX POSITIONS
Aleix Espargaró and Scott Redding will start side by side from the seventh row in the GP of Germany that will be held tomorrow on the Sachsenring circuit.
However, while Redding’s spot on the grid was decided by his 20th place time (1’21.749), for Espargaró it is the result of a penalty levied for having slowed Marc Márquez during the FP3 session. Aleix did not realise that Márquez was approaching him from behind and he involuntarily slowed him down. For this, the MotoGP Stewards Panel penalised him six positions, moving him back from the thirteenth place that he had earned in Q1 with a nice time of 1’20.972.
Luck was not on the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini number 41 rider’s side either who, first saw his chances at going straight through to Q2 go up in smoke by just 235 thousandths in FP3 and then in Q1 he missed his shot by just 9 thousandths of a second. On the track, Aleix demonstrated a good pace, so much that he finished FP4 in fifth place.
Scott Redding is expecting a fiercely fought race where he’ll be able to play his cards thanks to the good feeling he has demonstrated in terms of consistency in his long runs.
ALEIX ESPARGARO’“Today we managed to be quite competitive and unfortunately we didn’t have direct access to the second qualifying session for a few tenths of a second. We worked on both the setting and the choice of tyres, trying to use them for many laps and evaluating the behaviour of the different options. The lap in Q1 was very good but it was not enough, 9 thousandths in this case have made the difference. As far as the penalty is concerned, I am obviously not happy. I don’t feel I made a mistake, I was off the line and for this I find the penalty exaggerated. In case of contact between riders we have seen penalties of 3 positions, as yesterday in Moto2, and this is incredible. We will start a long way back on a circuit where it is not easy to recover positions. I will have to give it my all”.
SCOTT REDDING“Overall the situation is good. There are still a couple of corners where we lose a bit compared to the others: in the first sector I’m fast and in the second the bike works rather well, but in the final part, downhill coming out of the turn, the others seem to have more traction. We worked on this aspect today, but we did not find a definitive solution. I did a long run in FP4 with good sensations in terms of consistency. Unfortunately, in Q1 I did not have the right feeling with the front tyre. Usually I don’t feel good with the medium, but I thought it could work here. I think that tomorrow could be another very interesting race. The times are rather close and all the riders will want to save their tyres.”
