Gresini Ducati rookie Fermin Aldeguer admitted to feeling “regret” after a crash robbed him of what could have been another best-of-the-rest result behind Marc Marquez in the Hungarian MotoGP.
Aldeguer had settled into fifth early on and was matching the pace of the eventual winner before falling at Turn 1 on lap 14 while running behind Franco Morbidelli. He later served a long lap penalty for cutting the track as he tried to recover, eventually finishing 16th and last, more than 55 seconds behind Marquez.
However, Aldeguer underlined his raw speed by setting his personal best lap as late as lap 23, just 0.056s shy of Marquez’s race record. Without the crash and penalty, his average pace suggested he could have finished around two seconds behind the #93 Ducati, closer than runner-up Pedro Acosta, who trailed Marquez by 4.314s.
“Such a shame, really. We were having a good race,” Aldeguer said. “Behind Morbidelli the [front] pressure went very high, and I lost the front. I continued to gather information and the speed was there. The crash came just when the medium tyre started to work better.”
Despite the setback, Aldeguer remains encouraged by his performance:
“There’s regret, as we had the pace to do really well. At the end, I rode in ‘37.7, ‘37.8. Only the winner rode like me, and that’s a positive point.”
Aldeguer, who took fifth in Saturday’s Sprint on the soft rear, leaves Hungary eighth in the MotoGP standings with eight rounds remaining.
