Keith Huewen: 'Have we all underestimated Aleix Espargaro?'
Bagnaia kept his cool under constant pressure from Quartararo to finally hand the factory Ducati team a victory with its GP22, while ten seconds behind them Espargaro battled past Marc Marquez and Jack Miller to snatch the final place on the podium.
It was Espargaro’s third podium in six races and he now holds second place in the world championship, just seven points from Quartararo.
Throw in last year’s Silverstone rostrum and Aprilia have now reached 6 Concession Points and will now race under the same technical rules as their rivals from 2023.
- Remy Gardner: I should have ripped the other wing off as well!
- Marc Marquez: I was on the floor, the Spanish crowd saved me!
- Quartararo: Front tyre felt like chewing gum, Bagnaia pushed me to the limit
“A great ride. Are we underestimating Aleix? Has he made the step as much as Aprilia?,” said former British champion and grand prix rider Huewen.
“ It’s going to be very interesting. Vinales still isn’t cutting the mustard, I don’t know where he’s going to go at the end of this year. He is a brilliant rider and even came out with the Top Gun helmet, that was worth a second a lap on it’s own! But the fact is that Maverick is not performing and Aleix is performing.
"Maybe Aleix is - apart from a world-class whinger at times! - one of the very top class riders that has been underestimated.
“Maybe he has gone from being the one-trick pony who used to stick in a fast lap and not manage to repeat it in the race - maybe that has all been dialled out now and Aleix is a much better motorcycle racer than a lot of people have given him credit for.
“Whoever might come into that team alongside him [in 2023] has got a tough adversary there. Aleix has got confidence, he’s had a couple of podiums now, which has also put them out of Concessions next year.
“So Aprilia will join the other manufacturers on seven engines, no extra testing and so on. There’s quite a lot that they will lose next year, but Aprilia are right up there now.
“Concessions is a great system in MotoGP and if any manufacturer falls behind and doesn’t get a podium in one season, they re-gain Concessions the next year. So it works both ways.”
Huewen, Crash.net MotoGP editor Pete McLaren and podcast host Harry Benjamin, also discuss more costly incidents for Jorge Martin and Alex Rins and name who they would pick if they ran a MotoGP team in 2023.
Among the names being linked with MotoGP next season is Ai Ogura, who took his first Moto2 victory on Sunday in a race that saw a brave ride from the injured Aron Canet while Brits Sam Lowes and Jake Dixon both crashed out.
Meanwhile, victory in the ever-entertaining Moto3 class came down to a last-turn pass.
Download Episode 44 at the following links...
New podcasts available each week.
