MotoGP 2022: What the hell is going on? — Argentine GP insight

So far this season there have been three different winners from the first three races and nine different riders on the podium at those races, so not one rider has made the top three more than once, which hasn’t happened since 1952, the fourth year of motorcycling’s world championships.

Plus Aleix Espargaró winning his first grand prix at his 284th attempt, Aprilia winning its first premier-class GP in its 20th season of trying and both leading the world championship.

Aprilia’s first victory is also the fifth in a row by a European manufacturer – following Ducati’s at the last two races of 2021 and the first of 2022 and KTM’s in Indonesia two weeks ago. The last time European brands won five consecutive premier-class Grand Prix victories was almost half a century ago, in 1974, when MV Agusta was just about clinging onto its decade-long dominance as the Japanese factories arrived.

Plus 115-times GP winner Valentino Rossi is no longer around, making headlines whatever he does, and six-times MotoGP king Marc Márquez seems to face an uncertain future.

Espargaró is friendly, happy to talk openly and he races with his heart and with his soul.

And on top of all that last weekend’s race came really quite close to not happening due to a 35-year-old Jumbo 747 cargo plane breaking down in Mombasa, Kenya.

Even if we know the main reason for much of the above (MotoGP’s technical regulations which specify a four-cylinder and 81mm bore limit and spec tyres and software, which make all the bikes perform the same) it is impossible not to feel a bit discombobulated by what’s going on.

Espargaró’s historic win couldn’t have been more of an emotional, feelgood moment, because the 32-year-old is one of the MotoGP grid’s good guys – he’s friendly, always happy to talk openly and he races with his heart and with his soul. And he’s such a generous spirit that he would’ve had a much easier ride on Sunday if he hadn’t helped race-long rival Jorge Martin make it into MotoGP.

“I’m super-happy for Aleix,” said Martin, who led the first 20 of 25 laps. “I come from a humble family, so when I was young he gave me a house, bikes to train with and he fed me at his home, so he’s helped me all my career so far.”

Espargaró, who grew up near the Catalunya circuit, sitting in the classroom, listening to bikes going around, dreaming of making it in MotoGP, had been waiting for his big day since October 31, 2004, when he made his GP debut at Valencia aboard a Honda RS125. For context, that was the year Valentino Rossi won his first world title with Yamaha.

No one has waited longer for a GP win and few have taken so much criticism for racing for so long at the highest level without success. But this is the first year the elder Espargaró brother has had a fully competitive motorcycle; well, apart from 2008, his second season in 250s, when he had an Aprilia RSA.

This is Espargaró’s 13th season in the premier class. He started aboard a Pramac Ducati, when the Desmosedici was at its nastiest, then got relegated to Aprilia CRT machines, with road-bike engines, for the next two years. Then a year-old Yamaha YZR-M1 in 2014 and his first factory contract with Suzuki in 2015 and 2016, the first year of Michelins.

He lost the GSX-RR ride because he was too slow to adapt to Michelin’s front slick.

“Every time I attacked I lost the front: crash, crash, crash,” he told me a while back. “In the second half of the season I was fast, but it was too late to keep my ride, because everything in this paddock moves super-fast.”

Aprilia had returned to MotoGP officially in 2015 and was struggling, just like Espargaró, so the Italian factory came knocking at the Spanish rider’s door and they did a deal for 2017: a factory and a rider down on their luck with a long and winding road ahead of them.

Until last year, when Espargaró achieved the factory’s first four-stroke podium at Silverstone, Aprilia had never even troubled the top five.

Espargaró runs a little hot – very excitable, very emotional – so those difficult years weren’t easy for him, so three years ago he came very close to quitting MotoGP.

“I had no energy, the tank was completely empty,” he said after Sunday’s race. “I talked to my wife and I said, ‘Laura, I can’t continue, I’m not enjoying it. I said I’m still young, let’s try to something else’. She helped me a lot, a lot, a lot. Also after the arrival of Massimo Rivola [Aprilia Racing CEO and the factory’s first full-time team manager] everything started to change at Aprilia, so I still believed in the project and finally I think we deserve this win because we have worked very, very hard.

“I’m a very passionate guy, so when I arrived home from a difficult weekend, which was almost every weekend in the last five years at Aprilia, it was very difficult to be happy.

“My wife supported me a lot and the arrival of the kids gave me a boost of positive energy. I’m very happy to achieve this victory for them because it’s always very hard for me to leave them at home – this is one of the worst things in my life and in my job, to be far from them, so the first thing I thought about when I took the chequered flag was my wife and kids.

“After the race in Qatar, Max (his son) said to me, ‘You said you were going to give me a [podium] trophy and you didn’t’, because before the race I said, ‘Max, I’m strong, I think I can give you a trophy’, so after that race and he was angry, so after today’s race I said, ‘Now I can give you an even more special trophy’. I’m very happy but it’s still one week until I get home so I can hug them, but hopefully I can bring home two trophies, so now we focus on the race in America.”