A disappointed Aleix Espargaro admitted he “doesn’t understand what is going on” amid Aprilia’s recent slump in overall pace that culminated in him being eliminated from title contention.
The Spaniard –and Aprilia as a whole – struggled badly across the four flyaway events that made up the bulk of the closing stanza of the 2022 MotoGP campaign, with a best result of ninth in the Australian Grand Prix as most as he could manage – while tenth in the Malaysian GP officially ruled him out of championship contention after Francesco Bagnaia scored victory.
With team-mate Maverick Vinales only managing a couple of seventh-place runs as his personal bests, Espargaro has been left confused as to where the Italian squad’s impressive overall 2022 form has gone, the Argentina GP winner conceding the RS-GP has been a “nightmare to ride” as he struggled to match fellow title contender Bagnaia and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.
“It was impossible to be in front of Pecco (Bagnaia) today because he won, he did a great job and so did Fabio (Quartararo) who was also really strong,” began Espargaro.
“We haven’t had the speed in the last races, it’s been a nightmare to ride the bike.
“It was great in the first part of the season but I don’t really understand what’s going on now, we are very slow and I tried everything today to finish as well as possible and score as many points as I could to try and hold third in the championship.
“In the last four races either Maverick (Vinales) or myself have been slow and far from the top ten, and it’s very strange because in Europe we finished on the podium almost every race so it’s tough to understand what has happened.
“We will try and reset to finish on a high in Valencia, and then try to work out what happened during the winter.”
Espargaro added that he feels he has made less mistakes throughout 2022 that either Bagnaia or Quartararo and is “very proud” of what he and Aprilia have managed achieve across the campaign, affirming that his flyaway form is the key ingredient that has prevented him remaining in the title hunt until the very end.
“During the season everybody has made mistakes, Fabio has made mistakes and Pecco has made even more and if anything I have made less, what has made the difference is our level over the past races,” continued Espargaro.
“In eight or nine months of intense competition you can make mistakes and this is part of the game, I’m the only rider who has finished every single race and in Japan I finished 16th with a technical problem so I’m happy with my performance during the year and the problem has been our speed recently.
“I’m very proud of what we have achieved, but now it’s a bit sad as I’d love to finish the way we have been going for most of the season but overall the level we have achieved this year is amazing so hopefully we can repeat it next year.”
