“It’s not that he was arrogant…he made a bad judgement”: Aleix Espargarò dissects Fabio Quartararo’s awful Assen crash
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Aleix Espargaro
Reigning World Champion Fabio Quartararo has been receiving praises from all around for his superb riding skills as the Yamaha racer secured two back-to-back victories in the Catalan Grand Prix as well as the Deutschland Grand Prix. The French racer, who is currently at the top of the World Championship standings in MotoGP, is only twenty-three-year-old but he has already cemented his spot above veterans like Francesco Bagnaia and Aleix Espargarò in the points table this year.
However, it was a weekend to forget for Quartararo at the Dutch Grand Prix as the Yamaha Rider suffered two crashes during the race before he DNFed. Quartararo collided with his title rival Aleix Espargaro as they were fighting for the 2nd position. Quartararo sent his bike down the inside at turn 5 but then lost the front end which in turn pushed Espargaro into the gravel. Espargaro rejoined the track with a loss of 8.1 seconds in total after driving through the gravel. However, he made a brilliant recovery as he claimed the fourth position on the last corner of the last lap after passing Binder and Jack Miller.
Espargaro said that he had been thinking about the crash and analysing it and the only reasoning he can think of is too much confidence on the part of Quartararo.
Aleix Espargaro had predicted before the Dutch Grand Prix that even Quartararo can make mistakes
Aleix Espargaro revealed that Quartararo is definitely not a dirty driver, but the mistake happened due to overconfidence. Even though Quartararo had only two crashes in the whole season, one during practice and one during qualifying. Espargaro had said before the race that Quartararo’s lead in the World Championship standings was not impossible to close up. Because Espargaro believes that even Quartararo can make mistakes. And he was proven right in the Dutch Grand Prix.
When asked about this, Espargaro said, “I’m an old man of this paddock, I like to analyse how the things go, I know the category, know the bike, know my rivals.”
He continued, “I know the confidence of Fabio, and I also took a lot of time to analyse him on the videos – the races, the sessions, everything. I know how he’s riding. His level of confidence is super high, but when you’re in that moment it’s not that easy, when you are that fast, to maintain this, to make no mistakes.”
After the race, in a show of great sportsmanship, Quartararo went over the garage of Espargaro to apologise for the crash and it’s pretty evident from everything said by Espargaro that the level of respect between the two title rivals are really high.
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Riddhi Mondal
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