Further frustration for Espargaró in first Laguna visit

Aleix Espargaró’s education in the premier class continued on Sunday in the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, where the Pramac Racing rider displayed further signs of progress throughout the weekend in his debut season on the Desmosedici GP10. It was a weekend which ended in disappointment for the young Spaniard however as he crashed out of the race, his third DNF in a row.

The latest crash was a most frustrating one for the 20 year-old however as it came so close to the end of the race; Espargaró was just three laps from completing the distance in his first race at the Californian circuit and was running in the top ten when he fell.

“First of all I want to say sorry to my friend Álvaro (Bautista) because I touched him on the second lap when I passed him, and it was not very good. I’m really sorry about it because he crashed,” said Espargaró.

Analysing his own race Espargaró continued: “At the beginning I couldn’t go fast and I wanted to push but it was not possible. Then halfway through the race I started to push and passed a lot of riders.”

Having overtaken Alex de Angelis and Roger Lee Hayden early on Espargaró continued to rise up the order, later getting in front of team-mate Mika Kallio and then Loris Capirossi. It was when he was pushing to maintain his slender advantage over the Italian that Espargaró fell.

“The front was closing like in the other races and in the end I crashed,” said Espargaró, who was running in ninth at the time. “It’s another crash again and I don’t know what to do, because we cannot crash in all the races.”

Espargaró now occupies 15th position in the overall standings, and has 28 points after nine rounds.