Injuries left Espargaro dizzy in Sepang

Pol Espargaro admitted that Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix was one of the hardest races of his career. The after affects of his crash in warmup left him dizzy and in pain but with tenth place in the world championship to fight for the Tech3 rider finished inside the top ten.

“Today’s race was one of the hardest that I have ever had to ride. During the warm up this morning, Barberá crashed into me and I hurt my neck badly. As a result, I had to get it checked before the race so I went to the hospital and to the Clinica Mobile. I have to thank all of the staff, because they worked really hard to make sure that I was in the best possible condition, although in all honesty, I wasn’t feeling great at all. I knew that it was going to be a hard race. I experienced a lot of pain and sometimes I even felt dizzy, but I gave it my 100% and tried my best to get to the chequered flag.”

Having taken painkillers before the start of the race Espargaro admitted that he wasn’t ready for the race and that the pain was quite severe for him.

“The pace wasn’t fast and the race was more about the physical conditions. I took some pills for the pain and I wasn’t ready for this race. It hurts but it wasn’t the pain here. It was more in the head. I didn’t feel OK, I went wide a lot of the race, and other riders started to overtake me, and I started to be worse, worse, worse. And at one stage when I saw two or three laps to the end, I was not there. I cannot remember even the last six laps, so I was just riding, just on the bike.”

Espargaro crashed in the warmup with Hector Barbera with the Avintia rider recieving one penalty point on his licence for causing the crash. This was scant consolation for Espargaro with the Spaniard having been confident of a strong result.

“If we could start the race in the warm up, I was really good, my rhythm was really good, I was comfortable. But everything was just going worse and worse after the crash, we were in the Clinica a lot of time, I have no time, and everything was going to the opposite. I just wanted to finish the race, I was just playing for the tenth place in the championship. And I’m a rider, all the riders want to race, I never stop in one race. So if I thought that I can, even if it’s bad, I had to continue.”