MotoGP | Aleix Espargaró will announce his retirement at the end of the season

After twenty seasons in the World Championship, Aleix Espargaró will announce this Thursday, at the start of his home Grand Prix on the circuit where he grew as a sportsman and as a person, that he will retire at the end of the season after 340 Grands Prix and 7323 days as a driver.

Aleix wanted to make the announcement in a press conference, scheduled for a quarter past three this Thursday afternoon, at his home, with family and friends, despite still having 15 Grands Prix scheduled and, awaiting explanations, driven by the need to make room for new faces in the Aprilia garage, of which he will certainly continue to be part of in the future, even if no longer as a regular rider.

Aleix was the “bad guy” of the Espargaró family, lanky, with a distracted look and glasses. At the turn of the century, no one gave the boy from Granollers a cent and all eyes were on his younger brother, Pol, who was promising. Aleix’s career has always been on a razor’s edge, condemned to be a filler, without the possibility of predicting that, at any moment, his big moment would arrive. But it arrived.

Genís’ eldest son, certainly the only one who blindly believed in him two decades ago, debuted as a wild card in a Valencia 125 Grand Prix, the last race of the season, in 2004, exactly twenty years ago. He ranked 24th, almost a minute away from the podium, completed by Héctor Barberá, Andrea Dovizioso and Alvaro Bautista. The latter, together with Aleix, the only two still active today on a grid of 38 riders, including a young Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner, who crashed with ten laps to go.

Since then and until today, Aleix has taken part in 326 Grands Prix, which could become 341 by the end of the season, completing a career in the MotoGP paddock of 7,323 days, from 31 October 2004, the day of his debut, to 17 November 2024, the day in which he will definitively hang up his helmet, both on the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Cheste, with the Valencia Grand Prix.

For Aleix, however, the Grand Prix he has tattooed on his skin is his home one, that of Catalonia. And when the Espargarós talk about “home race”, they do so with good reason, given that they were born and raised in Granollers, a town near the Barcelona Circuit and, says Aleix, as children at school they listened to the sounds of the engines coming out from the Catalan track almost every day of the year.

The Catalan’s love affair with the Montmeló track is reflected in his first World Championship podium, third place in the 2011 Moto2 race, completing a top three that included Stefan Bradl and Marc Márquez. And in the last one, for now: the victory obtained last year in the MotoGP Catalan GP, ​​when he won ahead of Maverick Vinales and Jorge Martin.

Say goodbye to the last of the “old school” racers

Along the way, three victories in the premier class, with the first and memorable one in Argentina in 2022 and the no less spectacular one in Silverstone, England, in 2023, as well as a second place and seven third places, six of which in MotoGP.

Espargaró is certainly not a driver who will go down in history for a long list of victories, even if thousands and thousands of drivers have fewer, but rather the essence of a self-made, tenacious and hard-working driver, who does not he never gave up and remained faithful to his style until the end. The last of the “old school” of MotoGP, a rider who always defended the safety of his teammates against the “bosses” and who never bit his tongue, which caused him quite a few headaches.

Results aside, Aleix’s great legacy, his great work and certainly what he will be remembered for for a long time, will be that of having brought a factory like the Piaggio Group back onto the MotoGP map through the Aprilia team.

Aleix Espargaró, in 2009-2020 with Pramac Ducati in his first years in the queen category

Photo by: Pramac Racing

When in 2016, after two seasons as an official Suzuki rider, the Japanese decided not to renew his contract, Aleix found himself in a crisis situation and with high prospects of being left without a job just when he had realized his great dream, which was to reach an official team. It was then that Aprilia appeared, without direction, without plan, without budget and without ideas, but with two places in MotoGP and the desire to carry the project forward.

Aleix put on the leathers and started working on the development, together with Romano Albesiano and his technical team, of the RS-GP, a bike that wasn’t up to par in 2017 and which is now fighting for victory. The great work is the legacy of “the captain”, the man who gave everything for the Noale company.