Pol Espargaro was just behind Marc Marqu♍ez when the reigning MotoGP ch💎ampion was thrown into a vicious highside during morning practice at Buriram in Thailand.

The KTMﷺ rider was so close he later joked 🉐that he thought about trying to catch Marquez as he landed.

But already riding with a recently fractured wrist after a very similar out-lap highside at Aragon, Espargaro admitted the Marquez incident spooked him a little and he🥃 elected not to fit new soft rubber at the end of the Friday sessions.

"After this morning and the crash of Marquez, I took it a little bit easier and didn’t put a new tyre at the end of FP2," Espargaro said. "I used the medium and 🥀even like that I was only one-second off the top, which is interesting. So tomorrow it's going to be the day to risk a litt♍le bit more. Let's see how it goes and how the pain is when I wake up tomorrow morning."

Returning to the Marquez incident, Espargar😼o added: "Honestly, I was re🙈ally scared! I was close to opening the throttle to try and catch him as he landed!

"I don’t know what happened. He was not very offline. He was not pushing. He had just exited from pitlane and the body p🏅osition was maybe not the correct one. It was very similaওr to my crash in Aragon and then Miguel's crash in FP1."

While Espꦍargaro's accident was put down to a cold tyre in Aragon, the air temperature was over 30-degrees in Thailand this mor🉐ning, and track temp above 50.

"We kind of say cold tyre, but the tyre's never really🦹 cold," Espargaro explained. "The problem is not being in the operating temperature range that the tyre must work in. Then this can happen."

Espargaro, who had a plate fitted in his left wrist at the start of last week, had a scare of his own when he saved a front-end slide with his elbow at th♊e final corner.

"Yeah that was close. We are used to doing these kind of things, but the problem is we are not on the TV always so you don’t see i♑t! So it's not the first one, but I'm happy because we could save it.

"I saved it with my right elbow. I don’t think if it was on the left I c🦩ould have saved it."

Espargaro was 15th fastest and the top KTM rider on Friday, 1.095s fr⛦om Fabio Quarta🎃raro (Petronas Yamaha).

After being taken🦂 for hospital checks Marquez returned to action in FP2, leading much of the session.