Fermin Aldeguer "regret…” only Marc Marquez faster at end of Hungarian MotoGP
Rookie Fermin Aldeguer set a late Hungarian MotoGP pace to match Marc Marquez, but a crash and penalty left him pointless at Balaton Park.
Fermin Aldeguer had the pace to repeat his best-of-the-rest Red Bull Ring result behind Marc Marquez, until a crash ended his Hungarian hopes.
Settling into an early fifth place, the Gresini Ducati rookie was just two behind eventual winner Marquez.
But Aldeguer's hopes came undone with a crash on lap 14 of 26, then a long lap penalty for a shortcut as he tried to recover from last place.
Aldeguer finished at the back, without a point, in 16th but underlined what might have been by setting his fastest lap as late as lap 23 - and just 0.056s slower than Marquez’s record on lap 12. Both were using medium tyres.
A final deficit of +55.239s for Aldeguer was inflated by the crash and two slow 1m 40s laps, including the long lap penalty. Without those mishaps, Aldeguer’s pace would have put him around two seconds behind the #93.
Instead, KTM’s Pedro Acosta finished as Marquez’s closest rival, 4.314s adrift. Acosta's best race lap was 0.360s slower than Marquez's best and 0.3s from Aldeguer.
“Such a shame, really. We were having a good race,” Aldeguer said.
“With the crash, I lost all the opportunities, but this is racing. Behind Morbidelli, the temperature and the [front] pressure went very high, and I lost the front.
“I continued, to get more information and see my pace, my speed. And it was there.
"The moment when I crashed is just when the medium tyre started to work better.”
Aldeguer’s fall came at the same Turn 1 where team-mate Alex Marquez crashed, before re-joining for 14th.
“It's a slow corner, it's easy to lose the front tyre without doing a big mistake. Maybe a little bit of chattering, we have to look at the data,” Aldeguer explained.
“There’s regret, as we had the pace to do really well.
“At the end, I rode in ‘37.7, ‘37.8. I was very fast.
"Riding with this pace after a crash, and [seeing] that only the winner rode like me, is a positive point.”
Aldeguer - who scored five points for fifth place in the Saturday Sprint, on the soft rear tyre - is eighth in the MotoGP standings with eight rounds to go.
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Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury issues.
