Aleix Espargaro and Aprilia’s unlikely 2022 MotoGP title dream is all but over, and Espargaro thinks the “ridiculous” way in which they’ve thrown away points lately proves they just weren’t ready for a championship bid.
Prior to the 2021 British Grand Prix last August, Aprilia hadn’t even finished on the podium in MotoGP.
Yet this year Espargaro won the team’s first race in Argentina, briefly led the championship, and remained within touching distance of long-time points leader and defending champion Fabio Quartararo for most of the year.
But that strong points position has been eaten away recently. Having been a podium contender for most of the year, Espargaro has only one top-three finish since the series’ summer break.
And, with his poor form in the past few races coinciding with Ducati and Pecco Bagnaia’s charge to the front of the title race, Espargaro is now 27 points behind new leader Bagnaia with only 50 points left to play for in the remaining two races.
Espargaro conceded that mistakes and errors from his team in particular have led him to a position he summarised as “more difficult” after finishing ninth in last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.
“I think in the past 10 races we’ve proven that we’re not together as a team, we’re not at the level to fight for this title, and we’ve conceded many, many points,” said Espargaro.
“In the end, in the past few races, I think we’ve scored eight points [actually 12 from the last three] which is ridiculous if you want to fight for the title. This is the problem.
“It’s still possible, and I’m really proud of my championship. With two races to go, Aleix and Aprilia are still in the game for the title, and I’m proud of that.
“But with Pecco’s and Ducati’s form, and with one race of [points] advantage against me, it’s going to be very tricky.”
Espargaro first conceded a massive haul of points in Japan last month when a fuel-saving map designed only for sighting laps was left activated on his RS-GP machine.
His sixth place on the grid consequently became a pitlane start and he could only recover to 16th – his only non-score of the season on a day when Bagnaia crashed out.
He said there have been other less obvious errors that have also hit him and team-mate Maverick Vinales hard, including whatever went wrong in Sunday’s race and led to him dropping away from the podium battle with only a few laps remaining.
“We made many mistakes in the last three races,” Espargaro insisted. “You guys know it. It’s a shame, and today again I don’t know what was going on in the last three laps but I think Maverick had exactly the same problem as me.
“It was frustrating because I’ve said many times: the most difficult thing here is to have the speed to be fast, and here I had it.
“I made a good start, I overtook Fabio in corner two because I knew I had to be aggressive today, and I was in the leading group just waiting, waiting, waiting – but in the end there was nothing I could do.
“I don’t really have an explanation, but it’s frustrating after the hard job we did in the first 70% of the championship. To finish outside of the top five in these last three races has hurt me.”
Exactly what went wrong on Sunday is still unclear, but it seems that Aprilia made the same mistake as some of its rivals: taking onboard control tyre manufacturer Michelin’s advice and going too conservative with its traction control mapping.
The end result for others was a bike that tried too hard to save rear tyre even when there was more left to give – an issue that makes sense given Aprilia’s relative lack of experience at the Australian circuit and the fact that it only have two machines out there gathering data.
“I had no acceleration,” Espargaro explained. “The bike was stopping, cutting a lot of power. We knew that the tyre would drop, but if you analyse the pace of everyone, at the beginning the race was quite slow.
“But then at the end they dropped half a second, four tenths, not more. We dropped a second or even more. It was frustrating.
“We have to wait and see the analysis from Michelin in terms of percentage of degradation of the tyres, but I don’t think [it was that].
“Yesterday I was the second rider who used the tyres less in free practice four, and I tried to manage everything I could do in the first part of the race.
“In the end there was nothing more I could do, but the bike didn’t really go forward.
“I made a small mistake in lap five or six, but then I just pushed for one lap, did a 1m29.7s and recovered half a second quite easily.
“The speed was not high and it was quite easy for me to stay in the group. But in the end I was very angry inside my helmet because there was nothing that I could do.”
Also making the argument for something electronic being the root cause of Espargaro’s anger is the fact that it wasn’t a problem unique to him, but one also suffered by team-mate Vinales, who was left furious to finish 17th in a race that he believed he started as one of the favourites.
“It’s difficult to eat this result,” he said afterwards, “because yesterday in FP4 with the same tyres my rhythm was in the low 1m29s and today I only did one lap in the 1m30s.
“All the time it was 1m31s, 1m32s, and I finished in the 1m34s. I finished more slowly than the Moto2 guys, and I cannot believe it.
“We don’t know what happened. We checked the data, the bike is the same, but we rode three seconds slower.
“I honestly don’t know what to say. I don’t want to criticise anyone because in the end if I do I just damage myself, but it’s not the level that we need to give so we need to learn and to continue.”
