Aleix Espargaro reckons that this afternoon’s Argentinean Grand Prix is the golden ticket he and Aprilia have been looking for to finally record their respective maiden victories.
The Spaniard scored a scintillating first pole position for Aprilia in the modern MotoGP era on Saturday by a tenth-and-a-half over Pramac’s Jorge Martin having already raised eyebrows by showing potent race speed in FP2 just hours prior, Espargaro heading an RS-GP 1-2 in the session ahead of Maverick Vinales to boot.
Having scored Aprilia’s first premier class rostrum finish since 2000 at Silverstone last year, Espargaro feels that the pace he was capable of in FP2 proves that he has a realistic shot of fighting for his first grand prix success across all classes, conceding that he doesn’t believe his Saturday performance was “super important” to his victory chances.
“Sincerely I don’t feel Saturday is super important because I know that where it counts is Sunday but in terms of psychology and getting a boost mentally for tomorrow for sure it will help,” said Espargaro.
“We have good pace as we showed that in FP2, so starting from P1 makes everything a little bit easier so I can focus on my start and get into a rhythm, I think I can do the whole race in the low 1:39s so I’ll just try and look forward and focus on my race.
“Obviously on race day many things can happen, but if at any point in my history with Aprilia that we’ve been close to a race win it’s this one, we’ve done an awesome job to prepare the bike for today.
“The warm-up is long tomorrow which gives everyone the chance to improve their bikes, so we just need to keep our feet on the ground and try our best tomorrow.”
Espargaro added that he was “proud” to finally be reaping the rewards after a tough development period since joining the Italian manufacturer for the 2017 campaign, admitting that he felt like “the father of the project.”
“I’m extremely happy, but the best word to describe my feeling is proud because I’ve been working with this team for the last six years and in many moments, in particular the first three or four years, we struggled a lot,” continued the two-time premier class rostrum finisher.
“We finished sometimes more than one or two seconds away in qualifying (from pole) and close to a minute behind in the race so coming from there to here makes me proud because I kind of feel like the father of this project, and I am satisfied with the job we are doing.
“It’s only Saturday and the points are give out tomorrow and this is what counts, but I want to congratulate Aprilia on the work they are doing.
“The first two pole positions were with the Yamaha open bike and then the Suzuki, and now the Aprilia.
“Every pole position is a proud moment but especially this one because I’m not really a kid at 32 (years old) so to arrive at this level with this age makes me very happy.”
Keyword: Espargaro: ‘If at any point we’ve been close to a race win, it’s this one’