“This guy has balls,” Herve Poncharal gives honest thoughts on what Pol Espargaro can bring to KTM in 2023
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Herve Poncharal
After competing with the Repsol Honda team for two years, Pol Espargaro will be leaving the team and will return to race for KTM. Rumours say that the rider will be back to working under the leadership of Herve Poncharal. This will be the same leadership with which he made his debut in MotoGP with Yamaha Machinery.
There has been no official announcement yet about Pol Espargaro joining KTM Tech 3 racing but multiple reports say so. The rider himself confirmed that he will be in the MotoGP paddock for two more years which makes the move to KTM obvious.
With the Austrian Grand Prix coming up next, KTM is expected to make an announcement. Since it’s their home race, it makes sense for the Austrian squad to announce Pol Espargaro during the race weekend. This announcement would confirm the return of rider #44 in MotoGP for two more years at least. Satellite team manager Herve Poncharal was asked what Pol Espargaro could bring to KTM and Tech 3 racing next year if he joined the team. This is what the Tech 3 team boss had to say regarding the topic-
“In all his time at KTM, he never blamed everything on the bike,” Tech 3 Manager Herve Poncharal on Pol Espargaro
“Pol joined us as a rookie in the MotoGP class, and as the reigning Moto2 world champion. Like Dovi [at Tech3 in 2012] he was really hoping to do one year in the satellite operation – and this is what he was more-or-less told [by Yamaha] – and then be a factory rider in his second year. That didn’t happen and that shocked him, also because he was doing quite good for a rookie [sixth in the world championship in 2014], he also won the Suzuka 8 Hours [2015 and 2016] and he gave Yamaha 120% of his everything,” he said.
“I remember there was some disappointment, clearly, and at the same time – and this is where you see that this guy has balls – he was contacted by KTM and offered that deal. But he was young and a lot of riders would have said, ‘no, it’s too early, I need results now, maybe at the end of my career I’ll try something like that,” he continued.
“He also had other possibilities; he could have stayed with us, or gone to another manufacturer that was already fighting for wins. But he declined those and said, ‘I like this new project [KTM] because these people talk to my heart, I’m going to go there!’. And chapeau! He went there, he pushed incredibly, he was back of the grid in Qatar 2017 but was still smiling. In all his time at KTM, he never blamed everything on the bike. This is what I like about guys like Pol,” he concluded by saying this.
It is clear that Tech 3 boss Herve Poncharal is impressed by Pol Espargaro and intends to have him in the team. Another reason being that they have shared that relationship before when Espargaro made his debut in MotoGP. Currently the soon to be Ex-Honda rider is placed 17th in the driver standings with just 42 points to his name. Honda is having one of their worst seasons ever and it is clearly shown in the drivers standings. How well do you think Pol Espargaro will perform with Tech 3 next year?
Also read : Why have Spain and Italy dominated MotoGP?
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Varad Joshi
(940 Articles Published)