Aleix Espargaró, who had of a violent crash at turn 4 during the Warm Up, will not start in today’s German GP. After crashing on his fifth lap at the circuit of Sachsenring, the Spanish rider suffered a bad thoracic trauma in the left ribs area and was helicoptered to the nearby hospital of Chemnitz for further checks.
The weekend was already not going well for Aleix Espargaró
His position at the back of the grid was the result of a penalty for slowing Marc Márquez during the FP3 session. Aleix did not realise that Márquez was approaching him from behind and he involuntarily slowed him down. For this, the MotoGP Stewards Panel penalised him six positions, moving him back from the thirteenth place that he had earned in Q1 with a nice time of 1:20.972.
“We managed to be quite competitive and unfortunately we didn’t have direct access to the second qualifying session for a few tenths of a second. We worked on both the setting and the choice of tyres, trying to use them for many laps and evaluating the behaviour of the different options. The lap in Q1 was very good but it was not enough, 9 thousandths, in this case, have made the difference”, Espargaró said on his qualifying performance.
“As far as the penalty is concerned, I am obviously not happy. I don’t feel I made a mistake, I was off the line and for this I find the penalty exaggerated. In case of contact between riders we have seen penalties of 3 positions, as [on Friday] in Moto2, and this is incredible.”
Medical Director Info ?@AleixEspargaro has been declared unfit for the #GermanGP due to thoracic trauma
Updates to follow…
— MotoGP™??? (@MotoGP) July 15, 2018
