MotoGP<\/a> start was at Misano in 2024, was delighted to be back on track that has been missing from the calendar for the last five years.<\/p>\n\u201cI think that we, the riders, had not realised how much we were missing this track until we got to ride it again today!<\/p>\n
\u201cThis place is special: long, tricky, technical, with up and downs, fast and slow corners \u2013 you need to flow but also attack.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s one of those old-school tracks. Racing here is fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pol Espargaro riding for Tech3 at Czech MotoGP<\/p>\n
Espargaro is working with Vinales\u2019 current RC16 configuration but is also doing some testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am working with Maverick\u2019s bike, but with some settings similar to the ones I use during testing,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made some small changes, on the electronics for example, to try bringing more data to the factory engineers. It has been a good day. I look forward to tomorrow on the dry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old’s Saturday activities will begin with final practice followed by Qualifying 1, featuring Ducati riders Francesco Bagnaia, Fabio di Giannantonio and Fabio Quartararo, as well as factory KTM star Brad Binder.<\/p>\n
\u201cQ1 is a tough one, with big names, so it will be a good opportunity to learn,\u201d Espargaro added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Bastianini marked his return from illness with his strongest Friday of the season, securing a direct place in Qualifying 2 thanks to eighth place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am still not feeling 100%, but we reached Q2 for the first time this season!\u201d said Bastianini, who was sidelined by food poisoning in Germany.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important for us to have that top 10 straight on a Friday, and for me after a difficult week at home, it is good for morale.”<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pol Espargaro was thrown in the deep end as he began his first competitive MotoGP appearance of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4608,"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":["post-4607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ktm","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-pol-espargaro","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607","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=4607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}