The Honda rider enjoyed his best weekend of his 2021 season at Silverstone two weeks ago as he took advantage of the cooler conditions and increased track grip to secure pole and finish fifth.
After a solid qualifying in eighth place in Aragon, Espargaro slipped to 13th place in the 23-lap Grand Prix as he battled for form in much hotter conditions and on a track with much less grip.
As with so many of his problems with the Honda this year, Espargaro believes it is due to a lack of experience on the bike.
“Well, I think it’s the experience,” he said when asked how he can solve his problems in hot conditions.
“It’s the only thing that it can possibly be, because you ride your bike for as many hours as possible and then you understand how to get the most out of the hot conditions, because in low temperatures or high grip or even time attack I me understand cycling and am fast.
“I’m one of the fastest, which is good because I understand how to time attack without crashing or [I’m] Alone consistently fast, like this weekend, and I can be there for sure.
“But in these hot conditions, I don’t know. I have to discover [how to ride them] like figuring out how to time attack without crashing.
“I have to be faster in these conditions where I’m super slow now and it hurts.
“I feel very bad about not performing well, I feel like… it’s not that I made a mistake, I don’t know what to do to be faster in these conditions.
“It’s painful because Misano looks like it’s going to be very similar and I’m going to fight too.
“So it can’t be the case that I have to struggle so much every time there are hot conditions and little grip, it is not possible.”
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Espargaro explains what goes wrong on the bike in hot conditions, saying the Honda is getting “aggressive” and lacks the rear, which in turn causes problems with front grip at corner entry.
“Well, it creates an aggressive feeling, like floating on a bike,” he added.
“You don’t stop where you need to, there is always the feeling that you are losing the tail, always sliding a bit.
“And then, because the rear isn’t there, the front suffers. With the other bikes, of course, I had my tools to evade them or try to use other paths to approach or exit the corners.
“But it’s useless here. There was a moment in the race when I was a little better than the guys in the front, but I was very slow. I drove in 1: 49.1s, although I should be in 1: 48.5s.
“It’s not a little, so something is really wrong. I do things that are not good and that is bad. “