Pol Espargaró departed from Repsol Honda at the end of 2022 after two challenging seasons, moving to GasGas Tech3 where he sought a return to strong performances in MotoGP. However, severe injuries suffered early in the practice for the opening round of the Portuguese GP compromised his entire year… and eventually left him without a spot on the grid for 2024.
In an interview with Relevo website, the Spaniard shared that despite all the adversities, he can derive something good from what happened to him this year: ‘It’s complicated and tough. But it can be seen in two ways: attack yourself and say how bad everything is, how dark, how unlucky, or focus on the positive things that the situation presents – like what I was able to learn, not always everything involves the sporting side. Also, on a human level, there’s a need for improvement over the years’.
In Espargaró’s views, what happened to him this year might have even been a kind of warning: ‘Maybe I realized that it was time to say, this was a warning or this is much more serious than sometimes we are able to understand because we don’t have these kinds of crashes every day, and when it happens, you say, «Damn, this is real». And maybe it’s time to slow down, it’s not such a bad plan’.