MotoGP Mandalika: Espargaro ‘ready to fight for the victory’

After topping preseason testing at Mandalika and leading the majority of 2022’s opening race, Pol Espargaro is sitting favourite for the IndonesianGP.

While the Repsol Honda rider missed out on the top step in the closing stages of Qatar’s stunning showcase, Espargaro is confident, if a little reserved on his prospects for this weekend.

“Overall, I’m very happy how the preseason has gone but it’s difficult to expect something [based] on the preseason,” he explained from Lombok. “After, when you go on the first race of the year, there is a lot of nerves going on, a lot of things happening that you didn’t feel since a long time, since the last race in Valencia, so I was pretty nervous.

“When you set up a high target on the preseason, then you cannot do something less, you want the maximum.

“I start the race in a very good mood. I set up a good rhythm, I could start to do very good lap times. The race was super fast, much more than last year and this shows the performance of the bike that Honda has been working so much during the preseason. Thanks to that I was able to fight for the victory of the race till the last five laps. Enea put the turbo on and my wheels say ‘enough’ for the race and I couldn’t handle it. But anyway, at the end I enjoy so much the race and it was a good way to start the year.

“The race was very, very fast,” he reflected. “We were checking before how fast was the race and compared to my race last year, I was 20 seconds faster than the first race last year and 16 faster than the second race, already racing twice there. The pace was crazy! Honestly, speaking, we were not expecting this kind of race.

“I wasn’t expecting to break the race as fast as I did, to set up a race pace as fast as it was. We were