The sad case of MotoGP’s only outcast – and one silver lining

It is a testament to the particular beauty of professional sports – this absurd, almost anti-natural multi-faceted field of human activity we allow ourselves to feel so many things about and feel them so strongly – that almost any ending is a storybook ending if you look closely enough.

This year’s Valencian Grand Prix was not supposed to mark the end of Pol Espargaro’s full-time MotoGP career – not when he rejoined the KTM camp on a two-year deal after a failed Honda dalliance, not when he reunited with the Tech3 team that gave him his premier-class start, not when he donned Gas Gas red for the first time.

And yet, as of this time of writing, it sure looks like a 14th-place finish at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo has drawn a line under a 17-year stint in grand prix racing. Yes, Espargaro should line up on the grid again, and nobody has quite ruled out a full-schedule return in the future – but it feels fanciful for a rider who will turn 33 next year, juxtaposed against an ever-more youthful premier class roster.

“It’s the start of the finish. It’s the beginning of the end,” said Espargaro after the flag in Valencia, sounding very much not like somebody who is very confident of getting a full-time gig again down the line.

“I feel that one chapter is closing today in my life. And, it’s okay that I will race but it’s going to be something very different.”

But if this 14th place, coming home two laps down on a crashed bike after buckling under pressure from Fabio Quartararo, is indeed “the beginning of the end”, there’s a poetic symmetry of sorts to it.

Espargaro’s trademark MotoGP ride, after all, was also one where he crashed and got back up again. And it was also Valencia – 2018, the rain-hit and restarted race, in which a post-crash third place was not just KTM’s first podium in MotoGP but also Espargaro’s. Seven more followed, some of them on objectively more impressive weekends, but none as magical.

When KTM wins its first MotoGP title – and that day is coming, sooner or later – that ride is bound to be part of the montage. And the rider behind it will likely feature in it extensively, having played such an important role in the project’s formative years and having established a KTM legacy that, in 2023, he was hoping to shore up and add to.

A CAMPAIGN DERAILED

Just how good Espargaro’s 2023 was actually going to be, particularly in comparison with an increasingly-established Brad Binder who was already giving him trouble as his works KTM team-mate three years prior, is a valid question to ask. But obviously it should’ve been much more fruitful than this.

“The lost son was back” was how Tech3 boss Herve Poncharal described Espargaro’s return into the KTM fold in a post-season interview with The Race.

“Really, really happy, so full of energy, so full of everything, telling everyone ‘I want to be the captain, I want to be Gas Gas captain’. And he was feeling that he was finally in the right place at…