A Honda rider, Alex Marquez, made it into the top 10 at Misano. The Spaniard finished tenth, 22 seconds back. Stefan Bradl collected his first championship points of the season in 14th place. And Takaaki Nakagami took a point in 15th.
For Pol Espargaro, the race was already over in the first corner. The Spaniard was involved in the start accident. After the race he found clear words and could not hide his frustration with the current Honda situation.
“It’s all in our hands. Things don’t happen by accident. When you start from so far back, you can be in that position,” says Espargaro at “MotoGP.com”. “We’re slow. If the bike doesn’t work, what should I do?”
“Of course we can complain, but in the end we almost started last because we’re not fast enough. I want to be the fastest driver in the field. I’m motivated like on day one. Mentally and physically I’m at the best moment of my career .”
“We tried a lot this weekend. But we’re always in the area of tenth, nine, eight, eleven, twelve. You have to take massive risks for that. Ducati drives two laps and one of them is good enough for Q2.”
“We have to risk everything to set that perfect lap to make it into Q2. You can do it once, but if you try again you crash. That happened to me on Saturday morning.”
“The accident at the start is the result of not being in the position we could be in. We have to focus on ourselves and try to have better Saturdays. We have to be quicker in qualifying. Then the races are easier too .”
Last year Honda celebrated a double victory in the second Misano race. Marc Marquez and Espargaro cheered together from the podium. Since then there has only been one podium finish for Honda. This succeeded Espargaro at the season opener in Qatar.
“The race was half a second faster per lap than last year when I was on the podium with Marc,” says Espargaro, naming the sober figures. The competition has made progress. Honda not.
“I mean, how many parts have we tested since Qatar? That wasn’t much. It also doesn’t look like we’re going to try a lot during the test. That’s not how you’ll improve,” the Spaniard said clearly in the direction of Honda.
“The others put new wings on their bikes every few months. They try to do better and they keep getting faster and faster. We have to work harder to improve the situation. It’s the only way to improve. We have to work harder. We don’t work hard enough. We need to improve.”