The MotoGP World Championship is gathering pace as the European road trip moves north from Spain to France this weekend and the paddock sets up at one of the most legendary venues on the entire calendar: Le Mans. With a race every two weekends between now and the end of July, when Laguna Seca signals the start of the summer break, it is an intense period for the teams and riders. The Bugatti circuit plays host to the fourth round of eighteen with three different race winners aiming to become the first to double up, Dani Pedrosa having followed in the footsteps of Losail and Austin winners Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez last time out at Jerez.
Outside the top three in the championship Aleix Espargaró continues to be the standout rider, the POWER ELECTRONICS Aspar man breaking the mould on the ART machine to compete regularly with factory MotoGP prototypes. The Spaniard is the indisputable leader of the CRT category after three races and a clear favourite to retain the title he won last year. Randy De Puniet is aiming to make life difficult for his team-mate having also made a strong start to his season, which was scuppered by a crash last weekend at Jerez. The Frenchman is targeting a return to form in his home Grand Prix, where he wants to finish as the top CRT and close the gap to Aleix in the championship.
Aleix Espargaró:
“We have started the championship in a great way and I am super happy with the way things are going. We keep closing the gap to the factory prototypes and that's a good sign, it shows we are doing a good job but our job is to be the best CRT. So far we are doing our job well and we have to keep working at it because there is no doubt that our rivals will close the gap. Le Mans is not one of my favourite tracks but I don't dislike it either. Last year was a bit strange because of the weather but it was the weekend when we found our base wet set-up and after that I always had a great feeling in the wet. Le Mans has a lot of hard braking and acceleration zones, which is where we suffer compared to the factory prototypes, but we will keep working hard and giving our best anyway.”
Randy De Puniet:
“This is my home race and Le Mans is always a very special weekend for me. We crashed at Jerez and didn't manage to finish the race and even though we haven't made a bad start to the year in general it has been below our expectations so hopefully we can turn things around this weekend. The results in the first two rounds were good but I am still not riding at the level I feel I can ride at so I will be aiming to do that this weekend with the support of the fans. We will start out with our base set-up on Friday and try to adapt it to the hard braking at Le Mans, which is a circuit that requires good stability and handling.”
Power Electronics Aspar Press Release
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