Following on from the German Grand Prix held this past weekend, Pol Espargaró and Stefan Bradl travel to Assen for the eleventh round of the season.
The legendary Dutch track, which has hosted motorcycling races since 1949, will host the last Grand Prix before the summer break in July.
Pol Espargaró will try to arrive at the event as recovered as possible from his rib discomfort. He will be hoping that the circuit’s characteristics, with 12 right hand corners and the shortest home straight on the entire calendar, at just 0.487km, will favour his injury more than Sachsenring.
The Repsol Honda Team rider has previous podium experience at Assen – a 3rd in 125cc in 2010 and a win in Moto2 in 2013.
Stefan Bradl arrives in the Netherlands with the aim of improving the performance of the Honda RC213V. The German rider is working to solve a series of problems with the bike and boost his results.
Bradl has contested eleven Grands Prix at Assen, finishing inside the Top 10 five times.
POL ESPARGARÓ:
“I’ve had a few days at home doing everything I can to be prepared for the race this weekend, getting a lot of treatment on the ribs. There’s not much more that we could have done, so I am as ready as I can be. Assen is a really different track to Germany obviously, there’s a lot of fast changes of directions and you really need to have a bike that handles well. The objective is to get a good result before the Summer Break, we need to stop the run of bad races we have had.”
STEFAN BRADL:
“Assen gives us an opportunity to solve the problems we had in Germany. Before the race we were making some really good progress – especially with my riding. The objective for the weekend is to make another step in this direction, gain that last little bit of confidence and feeling when pushing for a super-fast lap. It has been a few years since I raced at Assen but I think we can get up to speed quickly there. I’m eager to have a strong weekend to go into the break with an extra bit of motivation.”
