Bizarre situation in MotoGP: Aleix Espargaro celebrated early and lost the podium! I thought the race was over, he said

MotoGP had its ninth race of the season on Sunday, May 5. The race at the Barcelona circuit was won by the current leader of the riders’ championship Fabio Quartararo, while Aleix Espargaro lost the podium due to a big mistake. He subsequently explained his bizarre feat.

Aleix Espargaro drove his home race and could have finished on the next podium. On the last lap, the Aprilia driver was in second position with a decent lead over third-placed Jorge Martin.

But it was on that last lap of the Catalan Grand Prix that he simply thought he had crossed the line. And so he began to celebrate prematurely.

In the meantime, however, three other drivers had overtaken him and Espargaro ended the Catalan Grand Prix in fifth place.

“I’m sorry. All I can say now is that I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I made a mistake that is unforgivable in this category. It‘s my fault, my pit was very close to the first corner so I didn’t have time to watch the laps,” Espargaro said at the press conference.

“I was going to the limit, so I was just watching the difference between me and Martin, which was 0.6 seconds. And to watch the laps, I was looking at the timing tower, where it said L1 (Lap 1 – the number of laps remaining in the race – ed.),” he continued.

“So I did one lap and forgot that in Barcelona the last lap is marked as zero, not one. If I want to beat Fabio in the championship, I just can’t make these mistakes, I’m sorry,” Espargaro concluded.

The Catalunya Grand Prix was therefore dominated by Quartararo on a Yamaha bike, who, incidentally, announced a contract extension with the factory Yamaha team just before this race weekend.

Thanks to Espargaro’s mistake, he has already increased his lead at the top of the riders’ championship to twenty-two points. The aforementioned Martin on Pramac finished second in the eighth round of the season, with his teammate Johann Zarco third.

Sources: MotoGP, Motorsport