Espargaro escalates his pace on penultimate testing day

With his first crash out of the way, Pol Espargaro spent Thursday in Qatar pushing and improving his overall pace as Stefan Bradl went back to work after an early finish yesterday.

The penultimate day of testing was another productive one for the Repsol Honda Team, a fruitful day for both Pol Espargaro and Stefan Bradl as the pair completed 110 laps together. Conditions remained decent for the premier class, many riders choosing to focus on longer runs over the course of the day as opposed to time attacks.

Early in the day, Pol Espargaro suffered his first fall as a Honda rider. The crash had little consequence and he quickly returned to the circuit after a change of leathers. Bouncing back, Pol picked up his pace and set a low 1’54 to move to the top of the timing tower with three hours of testing left. For the fourth day in a row of testing, Espargaro completed over 50 laps on the Honda with a best time of 1’54.103 and ending the evening as top Honda. Espargaro and the Repsol Honda Team continue to be pleased with the progress and growth shown across the two tests so far. 0.8s back from first, under 1.5 seconds split the top 18 riders when the flag came out.

Stefan Bradl was back out on track after a heavy fall the previous day, the German continuing with Honda’s testing plan. Today’s programme was focused around consistency and gathering data as opposed to pushing the RC213V to the limit. Although his final time wasn’t as headline-grabbing from the previous days, Bradl set a respectable 1’54.427 on his way to 13th. He suffered a second fall at Turn 2 but walked away unharmed.

Now just a single day of testing remains of the pre-season, the 2021 MotoGP World Championship set to begin in Qatar on Friday, March 26 with Free Practice One.