Espargaro: With new chassis everything came so easy

Pol Espargaro couldn’t hide his pleasure when describing his feelings when sampling a second new chassis at the post-season Valencia test, noting his immediate lap time improvement. “Everything came so easy,” he said.

The battling Catalan tried a second version of a new chassis concept – Espargaro feels it is only 80 percent tubular compared to KTM chassis of the past – on Wednesday and was suitably impressed.

“Honestly [it was] very good,” he said after ending the test with the eighth fastest time. “I started with the one I used yesterday – the one you all saw that is the colour orange – then I crashed in the morning and it was my mistake.

“We had some problems on the bike but that crash was my fault. Then I needed to jump to the new chassis because I did not have any more fitted on a bike and with a hard compound on the rear I jumped on it to get the feeling back and see how it was and to my surpise, and all that of the team, I did a 30.6 on my third lap pushing.

“I was shocked. At that time we were second with the same time as Marquez and after a crash and with new leather suit that meant I was not too comfortable on the bike. Everything came so easy. We go to Jerez now and let’s see what’s going on there and whether we can stay at the same level as here in Valencia.

“We are going to have new parts related to the ones we have tested. Today we focussed again on chassis and tested an evolution. When I crashed on the bike with yesterday’s one we jumped straight away on the new one and it was very good.

“I’m super-happy to do a second chassis like that right away means we know what we are doing, which is so important. We are touching the button I think and improving our weakest spots.

“We had a better pace for sure. After the 30.6 I came into the pit because I was not understanding it so much but we could take a very good rhythm better than we could all weekend in Valencia. I’m happy and very pleased. We are growing and we touched what we are asking for and that’s important.”

Does he feel he is now closer to a solid working base set-up than before? “When I was saying that I was testing a lot of things this was not a criticism but to say it was a hard job.

“I was super-happy that KTM were bringing a lot of things in these three years to be better otherwise we would not be here where we are at the moment.

“So, for sure now everything is going now in slow-motion compared to the beginning and the very new and very big parts [fall] to one guy in the factory who is Dani Pedrosa and when we get it on the track then it is better.

“This is different to the past. We had Mika [Kallio], for sure, but we had no time and we had to bring it straight into the racing. We were always too fast! Now we are in a different story.”