Monster Yamaha’s Pol Espargaro is mystified as to the reasons why he crashed twice at Sepang’s turn five today, saying that he didn’t do anything hugely different to any of the other YZR-M1’s riders.

The Spaniard, who ended the day 15th on the timesheet, had two identical crashes but was also joined by Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa in the T5 club.

"The day had some positives as we continued our work with the electronics and definitely found some improvements, but having said that, we have to understand what caused me to fall twice at turn five. On the data we can’t see any difference compared to the other laps,” he said.

“I may have been slightly faster but altogether, and compared to the other Yamaha riders, I am not particularly fast there, so it’s difficult to understand what’s going wrong. We may have to adjust the setting for turn 5 or maybe even change the front tyre pressure.

“Anyway, we got a bit lost because if you crash twice, you always take two steps back before making a step forward again and it disturbed the programme we were trying to run. All in all, we can’t say it’s been the best of days, but there are still some solid positives to take and we have to find our way back tomorrow. Despite this, I am really confident that we can be strong again on the final day.”

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