Pol Espargaro heads home from Donington with broken collarbone

The high expectations of Pol Espargaro came literally crashing to the ground at the bwin.com British Grand Prix on Saturday morning, when the likeable 125cc youngster suffered an accident on a wet Donington Park circuit in free practice, fracturing a collarbone in the process.

The in-form Catalan rider who has finished in the top four in the last four races, heads home immediately to Barcelona for an examination by Dr. Xavier Mir, at the city´s Dexeus Institut Universitari hospital, to determine the likely period Espargaro will be away from competition.

With 19 crashes in the same session Espargaro was not alone in hitting the deck but his costly tumble is likely to rule him out for at least two races, with next Saturday´s Assen race just a week away.

Lamenting his misfortune on missing out on this Sunday´s action, having provisionally qualified fifth, the teenager commented, `I am pretty gutted. It is really slippery here when it is wet and it was raining quite hard when I got to the corner. I flew out to the right and then landed on my left collarbone.´

`I´ve broken the same bone I broke two years ago and it is a real shame because we have been doing quite well in the Championship recently,´ he continued. `Now I´m going to miss one or two races, but I hope to get well as quickly as possible and get back to scoring points as soon as I can.´

Belson Derbi boss Dani Amatriain added, `Pol had two crashes this morning and in the second he unfortunately broke his collarbone. We have to see what will happen, but we need to arrange an immediate return to Barcelona so he can visit Dr. Mir, who will tell us what the next steps have to be.´