Pol Espargaro described his Friday as one the best days he’s had with KTM after finishing seventh fastest in free practice ahead of the British Grand Prix. The Spaniard will head into the final practice session tomorrow in a Q2 position having outpaced factory riders from the Honda, Ducati, Aprilia and Suzuki teams at Silverstone.
Espargaro was third fastest at one stage this afternoon but was keen to give credit to his team for giving him a good set-up today, as well as a bike which seemingly now works well in all conditions at all circuits.
“It’s been a good day. For sure, it’s the first day and this track is quite tricky with the bumps and a lot of change of direction requests a lot from the rider but also a lot from the settings. If the bike is not set-up, the rider needs to do extra but the bike has been getting better the last few races and we’re discovering that it’s not just the track that’s good for us, we are going to different tracks and the bike is keeping this pace. This is super important. I think it was one of the best days we’ve had with KTM.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all was that Espargaro set his fastest time on the harder rear tyre, something which Pol himself was shocked by.,
“I was surprised with the hard compound. I thought we could improve a lot but not as much with the hard. It’s really interesting because we always need to think about the race and I think the hard tyre is gonna stay for a long time.”
