Whenever an ‘exceptional press conference’ is quickly ushered into the MotoGP weekend schedule for a single rider, it usually means only one thing: retirement.
Growing up in nearby Granollers, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya seemed like the perfect place for 34-year-old Aleix Espargaro to begin winding down a MotoGP career that began in 2004 with a 24th-place finish in the 125cc Valencia Grand Prix on a Honda. It’s a venue which the Espargaro brothers (Aleix two years older than Pol) could hear buzzing with life from their school classes when they were kids; where Aleix scored a maiden GP podium in Moto2 in 2011; where he took Suzuki’s first pole of its return in 2015, and where he scored Aprilia’s first 1-2 in MotoGP in 2023.
That he has three MotoGP wins to his credit (four, if you count his Barcelona sprint race success in 2023 also) defies what many expected from a rider whose efforts for much of his time in the premier class went unrewarded, and certainly unnoticed.
“Especially in the last few years, and despite the fact that people think that the older he gets the worse he is, he has shown everyone that this is not the case,” 2021 world champion Fabio Quartararo said of Espargaro. “He is a rider who has never thrown in the towel.
“The work he has done with Aprilia, starting from zero to win races, work that he has clearly done with his team, is to be underlined. Personally, I want to congratulate him for his career, and I think he has silenced many mouths in recent years.”
In 2021, three-time MotoGP world champion Jorge Lorenzo and Espargaro ended up embroiled in a bizarre feud the former began by (as has often been the case) running his mouth about Cal Crutchlow, which ended with Lorenzo saying on Twitter: “0 victories in 18 years? I knew your manager [Albert Valera, whom both shared at the time] is a beast but the fact you are still in MotoGP can be just magic.”
Espargaro is widely respected by other riders on the grid, and there were plenty of well-wishers following his retirement announcement on Thursday
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
It’s unclear if Lorenzo understood the irony of that statement, as his miserable sole year on the factory Honda in 2019 led him to retire at the end of that season – just one year after proving he was still capable of winning grands prix with Ducati.
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