Life has a particularly cruel way of biting you on the arse. Pol Espargaro moved to the factory Honda squad for 2021, leaving behind a KTM project he in no small part was responsible for developing into a race winner, hopeful of taking the big next step in his MotoGP career.
Two podiums aside, what transpired was two years of misery as the RC123V struggled to be competitive and Honda soon alienated the Spaniard once his decision to move back to KTM – or the Pierer Mobility Group, to be proper – with Tech3 for this season was finalised. As his results suffered, so did his personal life.
It was easy to understand, then, when he ended the Valencia test – his first on a KTM since 2020 - last November truly jubilant. Espargaro had come home and looked set to hit the play button on his paused career.
With around 13 minutes remaining in the FP2 session in Portugal on 24 March 2023, Espargaro was on an outlap gearing up for an assault on the top 10 times to secure a place in Q2. As he came into the Turn 10 right-hander, he was flung from his Tech3-run RC16. For reasons still baffling to this day, the tyre barrier he was headed straight for had no air fencing in front of it. Espargaro suffered multiple fractures, including to his back and his jaw.
Surgery followed, as did four weeks with his jaw wired shut. A diet of liquids only in this time saw him lose two kilograms of muscle per week. He would later admit in one of his first media appearances that “I didn’t recognise my body”.
When Autosport sits down with Espargaro at the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano in September, he has regained the weight, fully healed and has a smile on his face again.
“It sounds like maybe too much, but this is how I feel: I was close to dying,” Espargaro says candidly about his incident in March. “You never think that this can happen to you. No one rider thinks that maybe tomorrow you can hit a wall and ciao, and you die.
“When it happens, you realise this is possible. When a mate who is racing with you has a serious injury, then you realise how difficult and tricky this job is. But from that moment you move on, and it’s the best sport in the world. But then when it happens and you jump back onto the bike, you say ‘hmm, it can happen’. And I think as you get older, it’s the thing that makes you a little bit slower, or react in a different way.”
This is one of the oddities of racers. They, more than anyone, are acutely aware of the dangers of racing. And yet the surprise when the reaper narrowly avoids claiming them remains. But a racer must possess this blissful ignorance in order to push beyond the mind’s limits to extract the absolute maximum out of machine and body.
However, when reality exposes itself, the mind needs time to repair itself. “The word is ‘fear’”. This was how Espargaro felt when he returned to grand prix action at the British GP. “I was scared,” he adds.
"I realised I need to decide when to stop. It’s a thing I need to say to myself, ‘it’s done, it’s finished, I’m cooked’. Until that moment it’s very difficult to move away" Pol Espargaro
“Especially on the outlap, when you come back into the pit box and the tyre is used. We know how difficult these bikes are. We saw a crash on the sighting lap in Barcelona for Iker [Lecuona]. So, these bikes are really difficult in a lot of moments, not just when you are pushing. When you are trying to push just to bring the tyre up, this is a tricky job… You have to risk.”
Given his serious incident happened on an outlap, this has been one of the biggest elements of fear Espargaro has had to surmount since coming back. Then there is the mental aspect: “Sometimes I try to be fast and the brain is saying ‘not yet’,” he notes.
The physical is also a limit. The only way to recover truly to 100% is to ride a MotoGP bike and take the punishment it dishes out. As such, this – as well as his knowledge of the bike – have meant his results thus far have been inconsistent.
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But there have been flashes of the old Espargaro. Sixth in the Spielberg sprint spoke to that. All of the aforementioned, however, does not answer the fundamental question: why come back to the thing that almost killed you?
That really depends on the person. Humans have a built-in instinct: fight or flight. Until faced with these scenarios, you never know how you will react. That covers everything from near-death experiences to lazily slipping over while ice skating. Everyone likes to think they’ll get right back up and carry on. But not everyone does. And that is understandable.
Espargaro admits that he thought often about retiring from racing while in the early points of his difficult recovery. He’s had a respectable career: world champion in Moto2 in 2013, eight podiums in MotoGP on difficult KTM and Honda machinery.
That’s a lot more than a lot of riders will ever achieve. He has a comfortable life, a loving wife – with whom he has been since he was 18 – and two young children. If he decided to call it a day, there would have been nothing but understanding and support for that decision.
But this is where his ingrained internal instinct kicked in: Espargaro could not let something else decide his own destiny. And with a little help from wife Carlota, he eventually realised this for himself.
“I thought about this many times,” he replies when Autosport asks if he thought about retiring at any point. “It’s worth it to come back. You start to recover and you realise you are at home with your daughters, which has to make you super-happy. And I’m the happiest guy in the world. But then something is missing.
“You’re happy but not as before. And then maybe I don’t realise it that I’m missing it, but the people who surround you, like my wife - I’ve been with my wife since I was 18 and she was 17 – understood this situation more than me. And she said ‘man, you are not happy here. I mean, you are happy with our family, but something is missing in your life’.
“I realised I need to decide when to stop. It’s a thing I need to say to myself, ‘it’s done, it’s finished, I’m cooked’. Until that moment it’s very difficult to move away.”
The determination of racers never fails to bring forth strong admiration. Espargaro’s recovery was helped also by the support he received from his Tech3 team (with whom he began his career in MotoGP in 2014) and KTM.
Unfortunately, Espargaro returned to a murky situation regarding his future. Signed up for two years upon inking his Tech3 contract, KTM’s failure to convince Dorna Sports to allow it to expand its presence on the grid to six bikes for 2024 has created a rider logjam that will likely see one Tech3 rider moved aside for Pedro Acosta.
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Both Espargaro and team-mate Augusto Fernandez have contracts for next year. As does Acosta. It’s a silly situation that merits further critical analysis at a later date. According to recent Speedweek reports, Fernandez will be the one moved aside and kept on as a test rider with wildcard outings thrown his way. Time will tell if that is truly going to be the case.
Espargaro merely offered up this on the situation last month: “I understand, but it’s what all the press has generated. It’s not what I’m thinking. I’m not feeling I’m in danger with my future. Nobody has really said that to me. I have a contract.
Unfortunately, Espargaro returned to a murky situation regarding his future. A rider logjam will likely see one Tech3 rider moved aside for Pedro Acosta
“So, it’s like you don’t go to Pecco [Bagnaia] and ask ‘Pecco, what are you going to do with your future’. He has a contract. So, it’s exactly the same, my place. We are answering this question a lot of times, but the ones who need to give the answers are the owners of the manufacturer – not us, not the riders. We are pleased and happy because we have the contract, which is what matters.”
In truth, Espargaro deserves another shot. Fernandez is brimming with promise, but he’s young and a Moto2 world champion, and will have more opportunities.
But what Espargaro has gone through to just get back on his bike is nothing short of heroic. And with a proper chance to prove himself on the RC16 again next year, there’s little doubt in this writer’s mind that he’ll prove why he felt his suffering was justified.
