The Aspar Team closes a season with great results, with a title and top 5 positions in all the five categories in which it has competed, and with the desire to continue growing in 2024
The year ends and it is mandatory to look back, to review the path travelled, to savour the successes achieved and to learn from mistakes to improve them in the future. The Aspar Team closes with these lines an exciting season, full of tireless work, with races in 17 countries and with a more than positive balance of results.
A title in the European Talent Cup, a runner-up in the MotoE World Championship for the Openbank Aspar Team, the third position of the rookie of the year David Alonso or the fourth places of Jake Dixon in Moto2 and Joel Esteban in JuniorGP are just the tip of the iceberg of the almost 80 races in which the team has competed.
Aspar Team: one title, 17 victories, 34 podiums…
The Aspar Team Junior continues to bring joy to the structure directed by Jorge Martínez “Aspar”. The rider training project has achieved this season, with the help of Máximo Quiles, a new European Talent Cup title, the second after the one achieved by David Alonso in 2020, and the eighth in seven seasons for the team's young riders.
But not only that: four of the five Aspar Team Junior riders have achieved victories, all five have been on the podium at some point, all have finished in the top ten of their categories and the three who have the minimum age will make the leap to the World Championship in 2024. One of them is Joel Esteban, David Alonso's future teammate in Moto3, who with his two victories and four podiums in JuniorGP finished fourth in his debut season in the category, just six points off the runner-up.
If there has been a standout rookie this year, it is GASGAS Aspar Team rider David Alonso. Arrived from the Aspar Team Junior, and with an immense desire to learn, he soon achieved his first podium: was there a better place than in the 'Cathedral', on the circuit that bears the name of the ‘maestro’ Ángel Nieto, and with a spectacular comeback from the seventeenth position to the second step of the podium. It was not going to be his biggest comeback of the year: in Silverstone, despite starting last, he managed to place third on the third lap and lead on the sixth... before crossing the finish line, for the first time in his Moto3 career, as the winner.
Four victories and eight podiums have allowed David Alonso to close his first season in the World Championship third in the standings, as the rookie of the year and the second best in the category since 2012, only behind Pedro Acosta in 2021. The team has been close to repeat that third position also in Moto2 with Jake Dixon. Only eight points prevented him from doing so after debuting this year at the top of the podium in another 'cathedral', this time in Assen, and after repeating it a few months later in Barcelona. Dixon will be the perfect example to look at for Izan Guevara, who in 2023 has finished the season with several results in the top 10 and with the ambition of fighting for greater goals in the year that will soon begin.
There were also two victories in MotoE. In 2023, Jordi Torres has given the Openbank Aspar Team its first two wins in the electric category. Great performances in France, Germany and the Netherlands helped Torres shine and made the team dream of the first MotoE world title until the last round of the season. In 2024, Torres will compete again with renewed energy and with the aim of fighting for the title again.
It's been 365 days of effort that are summarized in 17 victories, 34 podiums, a title, and several positions in the top five in all the championships in which the Aspar Team has taken part, a positive starting point for the 2024 season that is just around the corner.