With a great race and an extremely concrete performance, Aleix Espargaró rode his Aprilia RS-GP to a sixth-place finish in the Spanish GP in Jerez. But, more importantly, he continued closing the gap from the top, finishing 5 and one-tenth seconds behind the leader. This is the narrowest gap Aprilia has ever achieved and it arrives after four consecutive top-ten races with progressively smaller gaps.
The placing could have been even better if Aleix, after a fantastic start that had put him solidly in the top five, had been able to overtake Quartararo more quickly, who was slower than the group behind him after his initial attempt to run away at the front. Instead, he got caught up in the battle, ending up behind Nakagami and Mir. In any case, this is Aprilia’s best result ever in MotoGP.
In the final stages of the race, Aleix suffered pain in his right forearm. A flare-up of compartment syndrome is feared, as the Spanish rider had already undergone surgery for this ten years ago. He will participate in the tests schedule in Jerez tomorrow in a reduced capacity and will fly to Barcelona to have his arm examined.
Lorenzo Savadori, after demonstrating good progress in the days leading up to the race, had difficulty repeating the performance due to a mistake the team made with the tyres, so he had to settle for nineteenth place.
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