{"id":227951,"date":"2025-10-20T17:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T17:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/227951\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T17:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T17:27:07","slug":"pol-espargaro-things-happening-on-ktm-that-riders-cant-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/227951\/","title":{"rendered":"Pol Espargaro: \u2018Things happening on KTM that riders can\u2019t control\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KTM test rider Pol Espargaro says \u201cthere are things happening on the bike that we are still unable to control\u201d following his stand-in outing at the MotoGP Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>Former racer-turned-tester, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1832\/pol-espargaro\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pol Espargaro<\/a>, has been called up by KTM to fill in for the injured Maverick Vinales at the Tech3 squad for the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix.<\/p>\n<p>Carrying out testing duties alongside 31-time <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MotoGP<\/a> race winner Dani Pedrosa, Espargaro\u2019s feedback has proven extremely valuable.<\/p>\n<p>Espargaro\u2019s Australian Grand Prix weekend showed he\u2019s lost none of his speed, with the Spaniard qualifying eighth on the grid and grabbing points in both races.<\/p>\n<p>Taking ninth in the sprint, Espargaro completed the top 10 in Sunday\u2019s grand prix behind KTM team-mates Enea Bastianini and Brad Binder.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Espargaro was convinced his race last Sunday could have been better, but ran into tyre wear even though \u201cthe rear spin is pretty good\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are happy with our result, but after yesterday\u2019s sprint and today\u2019s warm-up, we felt like we had a better opportunity for today, especially with the wind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have the feeling that there are things that are happening on the bike that we are still unable to control as riders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe rear spin is pretty good, but somehow we are destroying the tyres much faster than the other riders on the grid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my case, I felt pretty fast at the start of the race.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was following Alex [Marquez], I felt that I could stay there for a while, but somehow I dropped and I lost a lot of positions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEight laps to the end, the tyres were gone, so we tried our best to survive until the end.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a learning process, it is good to be here, to be feeling these things, which we will try to understand and improve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1084707\/1\/worst-race-calendar-fears-come-true-fuming-pedro-acosta-australian-motogp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pedro Acosta was especially frustrated<\/a> with his Australian Grand Prix weekend, noting that he was showing \u201c70%\u201d of his potential and couldn\u2019t hold onto his rear tyres.<\/p>\n<p>He faded from an early podium charge to fifth at the chequered flag.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KTM test rider Pol Espargaro says \u201cthere are things happening on the bike that we are still unable&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,6399,806,805,803,804,6398,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-227951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ktm","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-pol-espargaro","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}