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.
Source: Autosport