Aleix Espargaro crashes out of Aragon sprint: “Not right, half the grid dirty”

Aleix Espargaro was critical of track conditions after his premature ending to the sprint race in Aragon.

On Saturday at the Aragon MotoGP, the Aprilia rider was one of several riders to struggle on the start line.

He lost multiple positions in the blink of an eye, then made contact with Fabio di Giannantonio and crashed out at Turn 1.

"At the start my rear slipped, luckily no one hit me,” Espargaro told Sky Italia.

“I hope they do something for Sunday's race: if someone rear-ends you it's dangerous, it's a safety issue.

"At least they should try to clean the track, it would be a start.

“It's not right that half the grid is clean and half dirty, it must be the same for everyone.”

His criticism echoes the words of Francesco Bagnaia.

The MotoGP champion and championship leader finished ninth in the sprint race, and also endured a bad start on the dirty side of the track.

“I was starting from the dirty side of the grid,” Bagnaia said.

“In the Safety Commission yesterday, I clearly asked, ‘Please clean the track and the starting grid’ because if not it could be a problem. And it was a problem.

“I was just lucky that Alex [Marquez] had good reflexes behind me because he was able to not hit me, but it was very dangerous.”

The warm-up on Sunday has been rescheduled to allow time for practice starts, in an attempt to tackle the issues that many of the riders faced on Saturday.