“My back is fully destroyed, my wrists are completely tired and I have quite pain on my left one, which I have an old injury but still, there is a plate on and the impacts are so big and the bumps are so big that, on a street bike maybe you can manage, but on a MotoGP bike, the MotoGP bikes are super hard, super aggressive, super powerful, heavy, and, you know, honestly, I have all my body destroyed, like I’ve been doing three days of testing.” It’s like it’s asleep, from the many bumps that there are. “Today I could manage the situation, I could make a good laptime,” Espargaro admitted, “ honestly speaking, I have my neck completely destroyed. The physicality of the surface is one that even those riders who enjoyed a good day admitted was a significant issue, with Honda’s Pol Espargaro among those who were fast but still suffered.Įnjoying a good day not just for him but for Honda all around, with teammate Marc Marquez fastest, Espargaro fourth and satellite rider Taka Nakagami fifth, the Spaniard nonetheless admitted afterwards that he had been left physically exhausted by the day. It’s very, very dangerous, honestly, riding like this. It’s like riding a horse… in the mountains, or jumping with a horse – you feel the same on the bike. In every corner, in every lap, you almost crash. It’s the worst track I’ve ridden in my life. It’s strange, because we’re always playing to be at the top but here you can’t because we’re already over the limit.” We’ll speak in the safety commission and I’m sure that some riders have the opinion not to race, but someone will say it is raceable and we will have to. “We have to see if the race will be a good idea to do, because it’s very difficult to make two laps in a row without mistakes. “Normally when a circuit makes new asphalt it’s better, not worse, and we have to understand why they decided to do what they did. “The safety commission will be very nice, because we will be very angry about the situation,” he quipped. It won’t be easy, but we’re trying to do it.” “I think the opinion of all the riders is the same, but we are here to race. “Today the thing to do is to understand how to be fast on the bumps because it’s one of the most dangerous tracks I’ve ever ridden,” said Bagnaia. Very, very dangerous.”Įspargaro’s views were echoed by back-to-back race winner Pecco Bagnaia, with the Ducati rider also admitting that he didn’t feel like the track was safe enough to race on – but acknowledging that the show must go on and that the dissenting riders are unlikely to significantly change the minds of some of their rivals. “If I have to vote in the safety commission, I will say that I will not race. It’s a nightmare, very dangerous, and I don’t want to think what can happen when 20 bikes start the race with full tanks of fuel and we go to the bumps of corners 2 and 10. “For me, it’s a joke to be here,” fumed Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro. With this return delayed by over a year thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, some remedial work has since been conducted on a number of corners, with resurfacing carried out in places to try and relieve the issue.īut with the bigger issue more to do with the underlying soil in the Austin area, which allows for subsidence and means that the problem is a recurring one not easily remedied, most of the grid were united in their concern about the conditions, with one rider going as far as to float the idea of a boycott of this weekend’s race. The surface at the Texan venue has been a frequent source of criticism from riders in the past, with calls the last time MotoGP raced there in 2019 for the track to be resurfaced ahead of a return visit. The MotoGP paddock has erupted into a fresh safety controversy ahead of this weekend’s Grand Prix of the Americas, with a number of top riders claiming after the first day of practice that the Circuit of the Americas is not safe enough to race on thanks to an exacerbated problem with an extremely bumpy surface.
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