Pol Espargaro a roulé aux côtés de Marc Márquez pendant deux saisons – 2021 et 2022 – et a beaucoup appris à ses côtés, notamment en termes de compétitivité, comme il l’a lui-même souligné. Cependant, il a rapidement réalisé que la lutte interne pour les meilleurs résultats était intense, et que la façon de travailler entre Honda et KTMT était (très) différente.
During an interview with Motosan, the now KTM test rider, who returned to racing with the RC16 after two years with the RC213V, revealed some of his learnings from Márquez: ‘I learned to be more competitive. Marc is very competitive in all aspects. Being next to him is another level, because he takes competitiveness to the maximum expression inside the box. So, the preseason was very good.’
Then, things changed and Espargaró realized that things at Honda were like a battle: ‘In Qatar, we were fighting in the first race and I managed to be ahead of him. And there I realized that it was a war; we had an unbelievable internal war. But I liked it. It was a very different environment from what I was used to at KTM.’
This led #44 to talk about some differences in the way Honda and the Austrian manufacturer work: ‘At KTM, everything was transparent, but at Honda it was much more opaque, no one worked together, everyone followed completely different paths. For me, it was the wrong way to work. I come from a different working style, where we achieved incredible results by working together as a team.’
