Pol Espargaró said goodbye this Sunday in Valencia to his participation – at least for the time being – as a full-time MotoGP rider. Now that this chapter of his life has come to an end, the spaniard recalled his decision to move to his new team in the world championship, KTM, and how it was a turning point in his career.
In an interview with Motosan, the rider, who took on the role of test rider with KTM after a year in which he returned to the helm of his well-known RC16 in the colours of GASGAS Tech3, recalled the moment when he accepted the Austrian manufacturer’s challenge: ‘This is perhaps one of the points I’m most proud of in my career as a rider. When I decided to sign for KTM, I already had that decision. Because in the three years I spent with a satellite team, I learnt nothing. They gave me a motorbike to race and I raced it. I didn’t feel productive and what I need is, in everything I do, to feel productive and useful’.
Even before the move to KTM, the #44 rode with Tech3 precisely, then a satellite of Yamaha, at a time when the conditions of the customer teams were quite different from today, and how this helped him make the decision after signing with a manufacturer: ‘The problem is that we now live in an era where satellites are satellite teams with official material. Back then it was very different. We didn’t have all the engines that Jorge [Lorenzo] and Valentino [Rossi] had. So how could a rookie with little experience be faster than Lorenzo and Rossi with less material? It was impossible. I had an offer from Suzuki when they entered the championship and I turned it down because I thought I wanted to go to the factory Yamaha. Then I started to see Suzuki’s results and I said ‘the next factory that comes along, I don’t care, I’m out of here and on to the boat’. And that was KTM’.
There, however, in a completely new team with no experience, everything was different and a “shock”, with the small successes being much celebrated, as he recalled:
– At KTM I touched reality. When we were last and second-to-last in Qatar, two seconds behind the front-runner, who was Tito Rabat. We were almost doubling up. At the end of the race, we got to the pits, and they were happy because we’d finished a MotoGP race. But then, obviously, by working long and hard, we got to where we are now