Aspar Team
Aleix Espargaró and Randy De Puniet were riding excellently over the course of the weekend, but a spanner was thrown in the works for one of them come race day.
The Power Electronics Aspar duo started strong, but mechanical issues affected their end result. Espargaró experienced a gear change problem that affected him on every corner. Despite this, he held on to take tenth place at Indianapolis.
De Puniet was not so fortunate, as after eight laps he had to return to the garage with a clutch issue. The Frenchman was disappointed but recognized the uncommon nature of the problem, and will be back to top form at Brno next weekend.
Aleix Espargaró
"I was very focused on having a good race, because I had a lot of fun riding this weekend. I got a good start and was feeling comfortable, but at the midway point of the race I realised that the gearbox was starting to fail. Suddenly the bike went into a false neutral. I was still able to catch Valentino and tried to follow him on every corner, but when I hit the false neutral again I ran wide. I had to make up the time again every time. I stuck with Hernández after that, but it was hard to get past him with this issue. Despite everything, I was able to place tenth and got six points for my tally, so we have to be satisfied and look forward to next weekend."
Randy de Puniet
"I started strong, but Aleix and Yonny soon got past me. I then stuck behind them to study their riding. The race started to heat up, but I didn't want to take any risks. Two laps before the clutch broke, I felt something strange; in the first corner I found it impossible to change gear and lost nearly a second there. On the same lap, on the chicane before the straight, I could tell that something had stopped working correctly and again lost two seconds. The next lap went ok, but after that the clutch gave up on me. I am disappointed, because once again we have lost a lot of points, but now we have to look at the positives and continue to work hard ahead of Brno to recover those points."
Source: Aspar Team ART
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