Aleix: Rib fractures detected, Ducati ‘on another planet’

Initially told there were no fractures, the factory Aprilia rider battled agonising pain and swelling in his heel on the way to sixth in the Italian race.

An MRI the following day then revealed two fractures in his right foot and, after Sunday’s Sachsenring race, Espargaro revealed similar damage has now been detected in his ribs.

“I have a lot of pain in the foot still, which is quite normal, but I also have a lot of pain in the back since yesterday,” he said.

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“So I went to the Clinica Mobile after the warm up and I have two small fractures. Well, not that small, on the [number] 9 and 10 ribs. Which is why I have got that much pain.

“The doctors told me that it's normal that when they start to heal, you feel more pain. So I didn't check after Mugello… But on the bike, it’s not a disaster. It's more when I finish. Now I'm exhausted. I have pain in the back, the foot. I'm really sore. But on the bike, it's quite OK.”

Espargaro, like Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, paid the price for gambling on the soft rear tyre for the 30-lap Grand Prix, while all others chose the medium. The Spaniard dropped from fifth in the early stages to 16th at the flag.

“We made a big mistake by choosing the soft. We didn't have a lot of info due to the weather conditions this weekend. And… You have to invent something when you start 10th and when you don't have the Ducati, so this is what we did. And yeah, was not a good choice,” he said.

“The start was not bad. I knew I had some good opportunities in the first laps so I attacked. I was in P5, which was good, but then by lap 10 already the tyre started to drop and in the last six laps was super dangerous. I couldn't really manage the tyre.”

But even without the tyre mistake, Espargaro feels Ducati, whose riders filled eight of the top ten places, is “on another planet”.

“I think it was eight Ducatis in the top nine. So I think today I could finish in ninth place quite OK. But I'm aiming for more. This is why we tried a gamble with the soft tyre, but it didn’t pay off,” Espargaro explained.

“I said from the pre-season that I like my [2023] bike. But the bike is 3 or 4% different than the ‘22 spec. This is why we didn't improve enough. [But] Sincerely, I didn't expect that Ducati improved that much from last year, but they did. I think it was 20 seconds faster. So we don't have the level.”

Espargaro heads to next weekend's Assen round holding ninth in the world championship.

Team-mate Maverick Vinales failed to finish Sunday's race after an apparent engine failure, while in 15th place, on lap 8.

Vinales hinted that the early stages of the engine problem might also have been a factor in his off-pace weekend:

"If we work well, we know that we can be fast, but evidently there were some problems which conditioned our performance. We still don’t know if this stems from a problem with the engine that forced me to retire.

"We’ll analyse the data in-depth now and try to figure it out. It’s a shame but complaining won’t help anything."