Aleix Espargaro has revealed that missing his pit-board was the reason he believed the Catalan Grand Prix had finished one lap too early, costing him a second place finish.
The Aprilia rider was set to finish as runner-up to dominant victor Fabio Quartararo after pulling clear of Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin in the closing laps, though he bizarrely began to slow just after crossing the start/finish line to start the final tour, initially looking like he had suffered a mechanical failure with his RS-GP.
Having soon realised his error after dropping back to sixth, Espargaro began to push once again and was able to re-pass Luca Marini on the final lap to take fifth, though the Catalonia-native was left inconsolable after missing out on a first rostrum at his home track.
The one-time premier class race winner explained post-race that he “didn’t have time” to read his pit-board due to it being close to the exit of the final bend, forcing him to read the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya timing pylon that uses a different lap-countdown method, leading him to believe he had started the final lap rather than the penultimate one.
“I’m very sorry obviously for my team because this is a very big mistake (to do) in MotoGP,” said Espargaro.
“My pit-board was the first one out of the last corner so I didn’t have a lot of time to read all the information, I just saw that I was pulling away from (Jorge) Martin but I had no time to see the laps remaining so I looked at the tower (timing pylon on infield) and thought I saw L1 but I couldn’t remember that one lap to go is L0.
“This was fully my mistake and I’m very sorry, so hopefully I can do a good race in Germany.
“I haven’t talked to anybody, I remember that race with Julian (Simon) I don’t know whether he had the same problem with the tower as me but obviously it’s not the fault of the tower because we had all the information in the board but we had no time to read it.”
Espargaro conceded that Quartararo was simply too fast in the opening phase of the Catalan GP to challenge him the victory – the Yamaha pilot’s series lead having now extended to 22 over Espargaro – but hailed the Frenchman for being “supportive” about his error.
“Fabio (Quartararo) was supportive saying these things can happen sometimes, he was really fast in the opening laps of the race so unfortunately I’ve lost 14 points to him, and hopefully we can recover them in Germany.”
