Aleix Espargaro will become a test rider for the HRC team at the end of 2024, when he will retire from full-time racing.
Espargaro announced his plans to retire at the Catalan MotoGP Grand Prix earlier this year. The Catalan won the sprint race that week and was initially expected to continue in a test role with the Aprilia team he has been with since 2017.
However, it became clear on the same weekend that Espargaro announced that he would be looking elsewhere to continue his cycling career, with Espargaro himself telling Spanish network DAZN during the Catalunya Grand Prix weekend that the brand he would become a test rider for “probably won’t be Aprilia”.
With Aprilia out of contention, the logical choice for Espargaro is Honda, as it is the brand currently struggling the most and therefore the one where Espargaro could have the biggest impact. Now, with the Japanese manufacturer’s confirmation, Honda has also announced that it will retain Stefan Bradl as a test rider, meaning it will join KTM in having a multi-rider test team.
But Espargaro is no stranger to manufacturers in need of improvement. His first factory outing was in 2015 with Suzuki, when the Japanese manufacturer first returned to MotoGP with the GSX-RR project after leaving at the end of 2011.
The GSX-RR won its first race, with Maverick Vinales, at the 2016 British Grand Prix, but both Espargaro and Vinales dropped out of the race at the end of the year. Vinales went to Yamaha, Espargaro to Aprilia.
Like Suzuki, Aprilia was in the build-up phase in 2017, entering as a factory effort in the same year as Suzuki: 2015. It took Aprilia longer to reach the top class than Suzuki, with the Noale brand taking its first win of 2022 with Espargaro in Argentina, but as with the GSX-RR, Espargaro played a pivotal role in the development of Aprilia’s RS-GP, which is now seen as one of the top three motorcycles on the grid.
When Aprilia entered MotoGP in 2015, Honda was one of the benchmark manufacturers (as it has almost always been in its racing history) having won two of the three titles since the 1000cc era of Grand Prix racing began in 2012. But by now, it has slipped down the pecking order, and now it is calling on Espargaro to play the role he has already played twice in helping HRC develop the RC213V back into a motorcycle capable of competing for victory.
