Aleix Espargaro (Team Suzuki Ecstar) outqualified his teammate Maverick Viñales once again at the Malaysian GP, but on race day Espargaro went the wrong way with a tyre gamble in the difficult conditions – using the softer option rear – and then made some mistakes in the early parts of the race, including a run off. Unable to quite make it back into the top ten, Espargaro ended the race 13th as both Suzuki riders struggled more in the rain on race day. Next up is the hopefully dry home round of the Valencian GP – with Espargaro optimistic by recent progress in the dry and ready to push for a top result at home in his last race with Team Suzuki Ecstar.
Aleix Espargaro (P13): “I’m disappointed with the final result because the weekend overall had been positive, but then in the race I couldn’t feel competitive. I decided to go with a soft rear tyre, hoping the conditions of the track would stay wetter, but at the end this proved to be the wrong choice. From the very beginning I realised that my performance was not good and I lost the feeling with the grip right after four-or-five laps. I also made a couple of mistakes, and doing them at the very beginning of the race, when all the riders were still packed together, meant I lost many positions and then it was really hard to recover. It’s a pity, we’ve made a lot of progress in the last few races and I felt very competitive in dry conditions, but we still need to improve our capability to have the same performance also in the wet.”