With his first fall out of the way, Pol Espargaro spent Thursday in Qatar trying to improve his overall pace when Stefan Bradl got back to work yesterday after an early finish.
The penultimate day of testing was another productive day for the Repsol Honda team, a fruitful day for Pol Espargaro and Stefan Bradl as the pair completed 110 laps together. The conditions for the premier class remained decent. Many riders chose to focus on longer runs during the day as opposed to time attacks.
Pol Espargaro suffered his first crash as a Honda rider early in the day. The crash had few consequences and he quickly returned to the racetrack after a leather change. Pol bounced back, accelerated his pace, and set a low of 1’54 to move to the top of the timing tower after three hours of testing. For the fourth test day in a row, Espargaro drove over 50 laps on the Honda with a fastest time of 1’54.103 and ended the evening as the top Honda. Espargaro and the Repsol Honda Team remain satisfied with the progress and growth shown in the two tests so far. 0.8 seconds back from the first, the top 18 drivers split under 1.5 seconds when the flag came out.
Stefan Bradl was back on the track after a serious fall the day before, the German continued Honda’s test plan. Today’s program focused on consistency and collecting data rather than pushing the RC213V to its limits. Although his last time wasn’t as headline-grabbing as it was in the past few days, Bradl posted a respectable 1’54.427 on the way to the 13th. At Turn 2 he suffered a second fall, but walked away unharmed.
Now there is only one pre-season test day left. The MotoGP World Championship 2021 starts on Friday March 26th in Qatar with Free Practice One.