Repsol Honda’s Pol Espargaro believes all he needs is kilometres in the saddle of the 2021 MotoGP RC213V in order to start running with the podium men.

The HRC newboy has performed well in races in 2021 but is being let down by his qualifying performance - but he thinks the laptimes will come with seat time.

“Well, this kind of bike – also the KTM – are bikes where you make up most of the time on the brakes, entering fast, stopping the bike, turning and go,” said Espargaro at Portimao.

“Then you need to be strong on the brakes, but if you don’t know where to brake then this is a problem. So, if you don’t know where exactly the limit is of the front, this is a problem because then you can’t take the best performance of grip.

“So, at the moment it feels like in other sectors I am ok. In turn pne , I was fastest in my qualifying session, so I’m able to be fast.

“But I do not match all the sectors on the lap because as on the brakes is where you gain time, I go wide too many times and I make too many mistakes on there.

This is a problem because if you are not fast and you cannot put everything together, in this tight qualifying, one, two tenths is enough to be first or fourth or fifth.

“It’s just a matter of making more laps, knowing the situation a little bit more, going to places I know more about the braking points.

“Then I think it’s going to be much easier for me to understand the situation and especially to match all the sectors on one lap.

“So just we need to be patient and it will come because we have the speed. I need to put it together.”