Starting from pole and the 💟pre-race favourite, Espargaro spent much of the race swapping second with Jorge Martin, helping Fabio Quartararo escape at the front.

The Aprilia rider made his final pass on Martin with 4 laps to go and was several bikelengths clear of the Pramac Ducati as the last lap began - when Espargaro wrongly thought the race had finished, backed off and be🐼gan waving to the fans.

“I tried to be close to him so I could fight on the last lap,❀ but then he stopped. I thought he broke the engine,” Martin sai💞d.

Team-mate Johann Zarco was just🐬 over one-s🎃econd behind Martin.

“I also thought it was a technical problem, but when I saw Aleix with his ar🅰ms up, I said, ‘he’s celebr♏ating’,” said the Frenchman.

“I had some doubts, ‘is the race finished or not?’ But when I saw Jorge keep pushing, I said, ‘even if it’s finished, I’ll keep pushing also. Maybe I will see Fabio cel🉐ebrating a few corners later…’

“So I just tried to stay ꦿfocused and finish the race. It was a nice gift. A big surprise. I really thought [Aleix] would fight back [past me], but now I saw on the video that he took even more time to realise that the race was not𝐆 finished.”

Joan Mir: I should give Aleix a bottle of wine!

Espargaro’s error cost him eight-seconds on the final lap, ending his hopes of a fifဣth podium in a row and dropping him to fifth place, behind Joan Mir’s Suzuki.

“Probably I should give him a bottle of wine toꦛnight or something for that position!” joked Mir. “I'm sorry for him. I think it’s happened to a lot of people and we all make mistakes. He's doing a super job and this can happen. He has to be proud for the race that he's done.”

Espargaro later explained that he had been caught out by looking a🌄t 🌠the lap countdown on the main straight timing tower, due to difficulties seeing his pit board.

When he saw ‘L1’ on the tower, Espargaro thought there was one lap to go, forgetting that the towe💞r, which is for the benefit of🍸 spectators, reads ‘L0’ for the last lap.

“I pay attention to the tower, but o𝐆n the last lap I look at my board and I saw that it was one lap,” Mir said.

“But then I had some doubts when I saw Aleix and said ‘maybe it’s finished?' Then I saw Zarco pushing and said ‘no, maybe it's his engine’ and [later] I und🌺erstood what happened.”

Espargaro isn’t the first rider to make such a mistake, past examples including and .

“If you think about it, [celebrating ea꧑rly] is something that is difficult to explain,” said Mir. “But 24 laps riding a MotoGP bike around here [in this heat] is a lot, it’s easy to make a mistake. For sure it won't happe💯n to him again!”

While the c🍨he🌟quered flag remains the only definitive way of knowing the race is over. “Sometimes if you are in a fight you don’t see it, but at least normally you see it,” said Zarco.

As well as pit boards, riders can also check their dashboards for lap information during a race, but Mir explained it’s not always reliable and he uses it on๊ly as a rough guide.

“It's something that I don't look at a lot because maybe we can 𒁃have a mistake with the warm-up lap counting [as lap 1 of the race]. So I don't pay a lot of atte🐲ntion to that [on the dash],” he said.

“Maybe I look at it in the middle of the race, justඣ to understand more-or-l🔯ess the laps remaining. But I never trust it [completely].”

While Espargaro remains second in the title chase behind Quartararo, the last-lap error cost the Spaniard and Aprilia an extra nine points in the riders’, con🥀structors’ and teams’ world championships.