Pol Espargaró has revealed that he has reviewed his priorities after his serious accident at the 2023 Portuguese Grand Prix.
Pol Espargaro made his big return to MotoGP in 2025, replacing Maverick Viñales, who was injured during five Grands Prix. Now retired from competition, he has been working as a test rider for KTM since 2024, and had only made a few wild-card appearances, but his performance had impressed last year.
Having qualified for Q2 four times, he finished eight out of ten races in the top 10, often proving faster than some of the regular KTM riders, and thus demonstrated that he hadn't lost any of his edge. Could he return to a factory ride? The Spaniard dismissed the idea out of hand, believing that at 34, he had done his time.
It must be said that his career came to a sudden halt in 2023 after a very violent crash at Portimão, which caused multiple fractures and required months of convalescence. This extremely difficult period ultimately led to the termination of his contract, and he was then offered this role as a test rider by KTM starting the following year.
Pol Espargaró and his two daughters.
While his 2025 results suggest he could still achieve great things, I will espargaro sees things differently since his very serious fall. "I had an accident not so long ago, a little over a year, which definitively ended my sporting career, and one of the reasons I stopped was because I saw my wife and my two little girls suffering."he confided in an interview with CaixaBank Experience.
"High-level athletes are very egocentric, very individualistic, always selfish in their character, in order for their sporting career to go well. And when this kind of thing happens, you step out of your bubble a little and you think: 'Hey, I'm not alone.'"
