Pol Espargaro - 'I'm eight tenths faster than the first test'

Pol Espargaro enjoyed a great showing for Repsol Honda at the start of the second MotoGP Qatar test with fifth place on day one. 

Espargaro featured at the top of the timesheets earlier on in the day, before finishing just ahead of his brother Aleix Espargaro who has also impressed for Aprilia. 

The Spanish rider is making his debut with the Repsol Honda RC213V bike in 2021, but has already shown well, with his race pace looking particularly strong so far. 

Espargaro has regularly been close to the top positions and feels there is a lot of potential left to unlock after only three days on the bike. "It's true that the progression I feel at the moment is coming faster than I expected. I would not say easy, because to make these laps you have to put a lot of effort," said Espargaro.

"But yeah, I would say it's coming more naturally than what I expected. But even like that, there is still a lot I have to learn about the limits of the bike." 

Espargaro was +0.7s down on the times of Jack Miller and Fabio Quartararo, who broke the circuit lap record, but Espargaro feels he could have been closer.

The 29 year-old added: "Even if the lap time is fast, I think in the fast lap I left a couple of tenths on the table. Every time I am getting faster and I'm not a little bit faster, I'm eight tenths faster than the last day.

"So it means that all the references change completely. Every time I go this fast in this lap time, I go wide somewhere, I don't open the throttle as I should, I get nervous during the lap, I make mistakes.

"It means a lot has to be improved, and the most important for me, is that the consistency is massively better than the one-lap pace."

With the first two days focused towards being comfortable on the bike and working on the riding style to suit the Honda, Espargaro used the third day to begin more work on the electronics of the bike. 

Espargaro said: "Until today, I was testing myself, and today we started with working on a couple of things. Just playing up and down with some electronics. It's the first day that at the middle of the day we were trying different stuff on the bike. 

"I think today was the first day where I made some laps on the limit, and I think I felt the front limit when stopping in the straight braking for turn one.

"Still on the edge I'm feeling I need more corner speed, because I'm still not hitting the limit in the middle of the corner.

"But going straight into the corner, I felt it sometimes closing which is very good, because this is the limit and I did not crash. So it looks like I'm more or less controlling this situation."

While Miller was the fastest and has been a consistent top three runner so far in his first few days with the factory Ducati team. The Australian highlighted Espargaro as a race favorite in just over two weeks time. 

Asked about that, Espargaro said: "I don't feel ready to win yet. Because now we are at a test where everyone can push to the limit, and if you crash, nothing happens. You don't lose anything.

"So in the race, especially in the qualifying or even in the free practice, you cannot push much because you have a number of tyres which you cannot waste easily.

"You need to really be careful and pay so much attention, much more than now. Now it's like freedom, a playground, you can do whatever you want and it's no stress, no pressure.

"When you play without all this, everything is much easier. So I want to see myself after two more days of testing that I feel I really need."