until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
It’s fair to say that after nearly two decades of racing across its classes, Aleix Espargaro has very much become a stalwart of MotoGP.
He’s been a journeyman racer for much of his career and a perennial underdog and now it finally looks like he’s earned – or rather, built – the bike he deserves for 2022 – but with his career much closer to the end than the beginning, is it too little too late for the veteran?
Under Espargaro’s tutelage and guidance, the RS-GP has made huge strides forward in the past few months. It’s now absolutely capable of winning races – something that he first demonstrated with his podium at Silverstone last season and then, in case anyone had any doubts, backed up with impressive pre-season testing in 2022 and a final result in the opening race just a fraction off the podium.
Normally one of the grid’s most excitable and confident characters even at the worst of times, the net effect of all that is that Espargaro is very much riding on a high now – even if he admits that the amazing feelings that he’s having have come a little too late in his career.
He’s now one of the oldest riders on the grid and is so far noncommittal about his MotoGP future beyond the end of his current contract this season, and the beckoning of professional cycling (his other great passion) has been calling out to him, with a second-tier pro contract expected to be offered should he choose to make that move.
But with an impressive start to 2022 already under his belt and the promise of more to come, if his mood after the season opener in Lusail was anything to go by, there’s every chance we might not yet see him trading 300 horsepower for 300 watts of pedal power.
“Before we started this race weekend,” he said after the race in Qatar, “my self-confidence was higher than it has ever been in my career. But you always have some doubts, you have to come to the first race to see how the bike will react, with a full fuel tank, what your opponents do, with many things. But we’ve confirmed that we are in good form.
“It’s not easy to overtake Marc Marquez and Joan Mir and in just one lap open up a gap of one second to them, so I’m very satisfied with this. It means I’m very strong and my confidence is high. I’m not really thinking about the title or whether I can finish in the top five; all I want is to smile every weekend, to have fun.
“This has arrived too late in my career because I’m 32 years old, but I want to have a year like this, where I can fight at the top every weekend.”
And while it would have been easy to assume that he was left frustrated by only just missing out on a podium in Lusail after a spirited hunting down of brother Pol, he was adamant that the potential Aprilia displayed means that settling for fourth was much more bearable.
“I’m not really disappointed,” he insisted. “Yeah, I was looking for the podium, and the thing is that the feeling I had during the race was the first time in my life that I had it, the feeling like I was the strongest one in terms of pace. But I was maybe too conservative with the laps I did behind Marc and Mir.
“I never expected that they would drop the pace, and I lost almost a full second with Joan and then almost a full second with Marc.
“I was able to catch the group, but I was always just a little bit too late, and in the end, I missed just one more lap to catch my brother. Races are like this, and it’s good enough to be the first race – but the most important thing is the speed that we had. I did many laps in the 1m54.5s which is amazing. We saw the level of today was amazing, but I’m very happy to say I was one of the strongest ones.”
The Qatari track has traditionally been one of Aprilia’s strongest, of course, and was one of the handful of circuits where team boss Massimo Rivola told The Race during testing he was specifically targeting for a strong result.
But, with Espargaro now confident on the bike throughout testing and racing at three different tracks, the Spaniard is adamant that this isn’t a flash-in-the-pan performance but instead indicative of the true dawn of a new Aprilia era.
“I know it’s going to be like an exam every single weekend for Aprilia,” he explained, “because we have to reconsider ourselves against the best in the world, but we did it in the Malaysia test, we did it in the Indonesia test, and I think we did a strong weekend in Qatar.
“I was alone for my fast lap in qualifying and put the bike just 0.2s from pole, and in the race, I was one of the strongest ones. Unfortunately, our strategy wasn’t that good and we lost time. I’m not saying that we could’ve won, but second and third, yes.
“I had a lot of fun, and it’s a pleasure to be able to fight with the best guys, to have the weapons to fight with them for the first time in my career. It’s going to be a fun season.”.
