Pol Espargaro puts demons to rest: “Last time I crashed here was bad”
Pol Espargaro overcame memories of his 2023 Portimao accident and secured direct Q2 access, helped by Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.
Returning to the scene of his ‘life-changing’ 2023 accident, Pol Espargaro’s Portimao MotoGP weekend began with another early scare when he fell in the opening minutes of practice.
Fortunately, he was unscathed in the Turn 3 fall, and able to return his RC16 to the Tech3 pits.
“Psychologically, it has been so important for myself to reach the pit box back on my bike after my small crash this morning,” said Espargaro.
“It gave me the confidence I needed for the remainder of the day, because obviously, the last time I crashed here was bad.”
Espargaro suffered ten fractures - to his back, neck, ribs and jaw – in the 2023 practice accident, forcing him to miss half of his final full MotoGP season.
This time, he quickly put the early fall behind him to finish fifth in FP1, then secured direct Qualifying 2 access - as the second best RC16 rider behind Pedro Acosta - with ninth in the afternoon, grabbing a tow from Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.
"Fabio Quartararo is one of those guys who keeps pushing even if there is someone behind him, and this is why he is one of the best riders, because he is confident,” Espargaro said.
“I tried to follow him, I tried to push as much as I could. It was really tough to make a good lap time today, so I am happy that we managed to make one which has qualified us directly into Q2.
“It was a good day for us, now let's try to qualify well tomorrow!"
Quartararo, meanwhile, was left 13th and will be joined in Qualifying 1 by Espargaro’s team-mate Enea Bastianini, who suffered another slow start to a grand prix weekend in 19th.
"Today has been more or less like the other Fridays, unfortunately,” Bastianini said. “I think that our strategy was not great because I just had one lap with the new tyres, so we need to improve this for tomorrow.
“For the first time, we tried the new swing arm, in both sessions. We have improved a bit, but we need to adjust a few things, because after checking the data, we are losing in some strange points of the track, where I am usually good at like T3, so we have to look into this.”
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