MotoGP Le Mans: Pol Espargaro “I just sent it”
Pol Espargaro put it all on the line at Le Mans to take 3rd place, risking it all knowing he had the pace to stand on the podium.
Pol Espargaro took his third MotoGP podium of the season, matching his best-ever MotoGP result of third place, he started the race from a lowly eighth place but managed to fight his way through the field to third place, picking off some big names on his way through and capitalising on mistakes from other riders.
He moved up to fifth place on the first lap but was unable to match the speed of the Ducati trio of Petrucci, Dovizioso and Miller who cleared off into the distance, allowing Pol to put some solid and consistent laps in before being overtaken by Alex Rins who would eventually crash in the race, this coupled with Miller breaking down and his fantastic overtake in the last few laps allowed Espargaro to take third place.
Espargaro saw the Ducati’s ahead of him slowing down and knew he had to capitalise on this, closing down their gap to eventually steal third place from them.
Speaking on the race Espargaro said, “It was tough, very tough, in the beginning for me it was difficult to stay with these guys especially the Ducati’s, they were performing amazingly at the start of the race, amazing traction and were turning fast but then in the middle of the race they started to slow, I caught up and started to risk a little bit more.”
Once the Ducati’s started to come into view once again, he knew the podium was in his sights and set upon doing so, taking risks knowing that he has nothing to lose, he is not in the title fight and therefore can push harder than other riders to get these special results for KTM before he leaves for Honda.
“I started to believe we could finish on the podium here, in the last 3/4 laps I was giving everything, I know the whole weekend of work was in those 3 laps.”
“We took risks and got the podium, we cannot win the championship so let’s enjoy the races and risk as much as possible.”
He later said he ‘sent it’ and pushed even harder to gain the podium, even gaining on second-placed Alex Marquez in the last few laps which would’ve been his best result to date.
Eventually, the Spaniard came home in a happy fourth-placed, looking forward to doing it all over again in a weeks time at Aragon.
Featured image – www.motogp.com
