Pol Espargaro is brimming with confidence ahead of the Algarve GP despite his somewhat rocky last visit to Portimao with the Repsol Honda.

Having good memories from recent years on the rollercoaster circuit, as well as the momentum from his Misano podium to spur him on, Espargaro is hopeful his summer training at Portimao will yield further success this weekend.

“It's a place where I normally enjoy quite a lot and the past years with the KTM I performed not bad,” the HRC rider explained on Thursday. “Sure, it was not amazingly good but the race was a decent race and I finished almost in the podium, which it was very good.

“The beginning of the year we come here with many, many problems. I struggle a lot. I had a big, big crash in the last corner and I don't have the best memories with the Honda here. Anyway, I come during the summer break to train so I have the layout a little bit fresher, maybe than the others, which is nice and also the bike has changed quite a lot from that moment on the beginning of the year.

“Honestly speaking we have much more possibilities to have a great weekend than what we have done at the beginning of the year,” he continued. “So really I'm looking forward to jump again on the bike after the nice results we take in the past weekend in Misano.

“From the past races I've been working in that direction,” he said, turning his attention to 2022. “Thinking that for sure this year is over for me. It was over a lot of races ago so I plan to start to think with Honda about the future. We try to do as much as we could with the current package, trying to generate or trying to copy with what we have, inside the rules, thinking about next year's bike.

“We had some benefits and some contrasts. For example, we had quite a lot of problems in Texas and then we come to Misano and we had all the contrasts, we had the benefit in there with the current package. Thinking about the next year there is these pros and cons and I'm really looking forward to just make a reset. With all the experience I have, with all the knowledge I have with the Honda now, I feel sometimes quite confident and I can achieve great results.

“Start from zero with a good base and from there just try to enjoy with this bike, which I didn't enjoy much because I was struggling quite a lot. Future, I think is bright but we need to work harder than the others because we start with a little bit disadvantage.”