A battered and bruised Pol Espargaro arrived as TT Circuit Assen prepared for another gruelling weekend on the Repsol Honda.

After retiring from the Sachsenring race due to pain in his left ribs, sustained during an FP1 crash and exacerbated by the weekend’s exertions, Espargaro has undergone a few days of rehab ahead of the Dutch action.

“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,” Espargaro explained after a tough week.

“There’s not much more that we could have done, so I am as ready as I can be. The rib injury is similar to what I had in Valencia last year so I know how to deal with them a bit. Three days is not a lot before Assen, but it is what it is.

“I tried to do what I could in the race,” he said of last Sunday’s trials, “but the pain got worse and worse and with the heat, I was struggling to breathe. We also had a lot of heat on my right foot which added to the pain. I had to retire; the pain was too extreme.

“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.”