Augusto Fernández made his MotoGP debut last year, showing progress and achieving good results, including a fourth-place finish in the French Grand Prix. He ended the season with 71 points, securing the 17th position in the championship, despite being without the reference of his experienced teammate Pol Espargaró for several months after Espargaró got injured in the second practice session of the season.
This year, Fernández continues with Red Bull GasGas riding a KTM RC16, and improvements are anticipated. Team manager Nicolas Goyon stated to the press: ‘For sure we had a good first year. We want to see improvements. I did a few statistics and between the rookie year and the second year you can expect 200% of improvement. So let’s say he scored 71 points last year, and if he improves as per the averege rider between the year 1 and the year 2, it might be something around 200 points. It won’t be easy, we have a lot of fast riders and fast bikes that you need to keep behind you. But this is a target. I think if he keeps following this statistic, for sure from our side there won’t be any reason not to keep him’.
From KTM’s perspective, the sports director does not set specific result objectives but expects to see significant progress from Fernández: ‘He did such a good job as a rookie. Everybody remembers the season highlight in Le Mans. But also the all scenario, how he was acting, how positive he was, how much he was believing in the project and started to ask the right things to the technicians – because in the beginning is always difficult for a Moto2 rider jumping on the MotoGP bike. They don’t know what to ask because they are overwhelmed by everything. And you have so many possibilities to influence the bike by asking different things on the electronics and you have so many possibilities from hardware and electronic side to choose that is difficult for a rider. And he was super, super professional doing all that. He was learning every day, he stayed positive, he was pushing and he scored points in so many races’.
After a promising debut year, the Austrian expects even better from #37: ‘He did great, so I feel going into the second year there will be for sure another big step. We need to work definitely in his Sprint races qualities, so we expect him to take some points in the new season and then stabilize a bit more. I hope for a little bit of progress. In MotoGP we cannot ask for shortcut and make crazy jumps, but I’m sure he is working so hard, he will just make the logical step, and I think he will look great this year’.