Pol Espargaró: “These tests are helping to prove different things”

Pol Espargaró is one of the group of 125cc riders whom have displayed good form in pre-season, as the preparations for the 2010 campaign begin to reach their finale. The young Bainet Derbi rider has been the second fastest rider in the official tests at Valencia and Jerez, with only Marc Márquez ahead of him on the timesheets.

Espargaró has given a positive and balanced assessment of the work done at Jerez, where he managed to make good progress on the track despite the intermittent presence of rain.

“It’s been good, I think we’ve worked well during the weekend. We have had some small problems with the suspension, but little by little we are improving,” explained Espargaró to motogp.com.

“The main problem is the time we have had. With the rain every ten minutes this has stopped us from doing long runs and working with the tyres, because we haven’t had time, but we did a good job and we are ahead. These tests serve to prove things and we are doing well,” added Espargaró, who rode 44 laps during the long session on Monday.

Unlike some riders who opted to not ride in the rain, Espargaró used the conditions to gain further experience on track.

“Last year I had a lot of problems in the rain and I needed a day like this to gain confidence on the bike. In the morning a set a time of 1’59.8 and in the afternoon, with a lot of water on the track, I made a 2’00.3 whilst testing two types of tyre and different chassis configurations,” he said. “These were three days of complete testing in which we rode in dry, wet and mixed conditions and were always amongst the best.”