The path that David Alonso started with the Aspar Team in October 2017, at the age of eleven, today reaches a new milestone with the Moto3 World Championship title

A path, especially when it is long, always begins with a step, the first, the one that breaks the ice. The first step in this story that we celebrate today, that of the first world title of CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team rider David Alonso, was taken by Nico Terol. It was 2017 and he was still the last Aspar Team world champion. He had received a task from the team's alma mater, Jorge Martínez "Aspar": he had to look for the champions of the future.

Terol was going to be in charge of looking after those young talents that "Aspar" wanted to take to the elite, those riders who had to succeed him as the new Aspar Team world champions. And he had to do it starting from the base. The priority was to find, with the clinical eye that champions have, the riders who would make us dream again.

His first signing for this renewed Aspar Team Junior that was barely a year old was a young, very young rider, David Alonso, who was still starting to compete in big tracks. Those first meetings, at the door of the garage on the Spanish Championship weekends, with David's face of excitement at seeing a world-class team so close, began to forge a signing that came in October 2017, when he received the opportunity to compete in 85GP with the team.

That day, in Jerez, David Alonso was sixth, 41 seconds behind his new teammate and now rival, Iván Ortolá. But Amadeo and Nico saw something in him that made them bet even more strongly on having him as a future rider in 2018.

Dani and Javi, also two young members of the team in those early years, were the first people who began to direct the Colombian's first steps in the races, just as another Dani, Dani Villar, would soon do. Dani would become inseparable from the young rider, that support to look up to, to learn from, and with whom to share the bad times through these years, and also the good ones.

David was, little by little, burning stages on his way to a greater objective, and he did so, almost always, offering constant joy to the team. In 2018, the first title, the Spanish 85GP Championship. Two years later, in one of the most difficult years of our lives, he would win the second, the European Talent Cup, and a year later, without getting tired of winning, he repeated as champion, this time in the Red Bull Rookies Cup. It was 2021 and, after having been fourth the previous season, he achieved the long-awaited title that on so many occasions has meant the leap to the World Championship.

But it wasn’t meant to be, at least that year. A decision, agreed with the team, with Nico Terol and with Jorge Martínez “Aspar”, not to accelerate his growth in a world in which speed only counts on the track, led him to a new season in JuniorGP, the second, in which he also focused on developing the new Moto3 that would be put on track in the World Championship in 2023. In that sense, it was a tough year, a year in which, used to winning, he only got on the podium once, although it was on the higher step. The straw that almost broke the camel's back was his debut in the World Championship, at 15 years old, as a substitute for a contender for the title, Sergio García Dols.

The dream of almost every teenage rider, to race in a race that until then he had only seen on TV, turned into a swamp of doubts. He even told Gino Borsoi, his team manager at the time. “It was my first race in the World Championship, but the worst since I've been riding motorcycles. I remember that day a lot, it was a bad season, and making my debut in the World Championship was the final straw. I finished last in the standings, thinking 'don't let them lap me'. I didn't know where to put myself, I told Borsoi that I didn't think I could go fast on a Moto3 in my life,” Alonso explained this season, three years after that moment.

The doubts never ended. The hard task of developing a bike, with the help of Vicente, Javi, Pepe, Cristian or David, seemed to bear no fruit. But it was all part of a long-term plan. David Alonso knew how to wait and, above all, trusted in a team and in the advice of Nico Terol that would soon turn to be the best plan.

At the end of 2022, the time came: the announcement of the definitive move to the World Championship. The gap left by a dream pair, the duo formed by Izan Guevara and Sergio García, was difficult to fill. In a twist of fate, Alonso fell into the expert hands that had led his mentor Nico Terol to the title. Mauri, Giagi, Barabba and Paolo, champions in 2007 with Gábor Tálmacsi, touched the sky again in 2011 with a young Nico Terol in a year with 7 poles, 8 victories and 11 podiums.

After being champions again with Albert Arenas in 2020 and runners-up with Sergio García in 2022, they faced the challenge of a rider with almost no world championship experience and with everything to do. They got down to work and it took them four races to reach the podium and nine to taste victory for the first time, in an impossible race that started at the back of the grid in Silverstone and ended on the top of the podium on a circuit that five days earlier David had only seen in videos.

Four victories and several more podiums allowed the team to dream of revalidating the title, the Moto3 title, which had been in the Aspar Team's showcases on two occasions in the previous three years. At the end of the season, David achieved the same number of victories as the champion and only the initial inexperience in his visits to Portugal or Argentina kept him from fighting for higher heights. He had to settle for the ‘Rookie of the year’ title. Okay, as a start it was not bad at all. But in 2024, the demands would increase.

From GASGAS red to CFMOTO blue to mark that step from kid to favourite, from being one more to being the rival that everyone would look at. With the champion and runner-up in Moto2, he, third in 2023, had no one ahead of him to overshadow him. But motorcycles are not mathematics and 2 + 2 does not always give 4 in a sport with as many variables as this. It did not matter: Alonso led four of the five days of preseason and already left written the script that the category would follow this year. The victory in Qatar did not come as a surprise; the win in America was a positive point. The victories in France, Barcelona and Italy were a message to the outside world: he was not going to give options. To anyone.

With three rivals evenly matched, three riders who were taking points from each other, Alonso's advantage was increasing little by little. The blow on the table in Germany, after hitting the ground on Friday, was another important step on that path. The feeling of superiority that the Colombian conveyed, with six victories in nine races, began to arouse rumours about whether he would be able to surpass Joan Mir's 10 Moto3 victories in 2017 or Valentino Rossi's 11 lightweight class wins in 1997.

The long faces after finishing second in Great Britain gave way again to joy with the triumph in Austria. A new victory in Misano put an end to the doubts of Aragon and San Marino and allowed him to once again distance himself from his three rivals, already shooting towards the title and forcing them to start to rethink their objectives until the end of the year. In Indonesia he went from the ground, on Friday, to the sky, on Sunday. And now in Japan, where he arrived depending on himself to close the title with four races to go, he has achieved the title as champions like to do it, with a win. 

It has been a long road to reach the Moto3 title, and he has shared it with many people. Many of them have even been on the podium with him: Jorge, Nico, Mauri, Barabba, Óscar, Roger, Majo, Giagi, Paolo and Vicente. Without them, and many others, you would not be reading this text, and he would not have celebrated in Japan the seventh world title in the lightweight category for a master 125 / Moto3 team, the CFMOTO Aspar Team.

But without David, and without that decision at the end of 2017, all this would have been meaningless.

Track record: 
2017    6th     Spanish 85GP Championship (1 race with Aspar Team Junior)
2018     CHAMPION    Spanish 85GP Championship (8 races, 6 wins, 7 podiums)
2019     5th         European Talent Cup (8 races, 4 podiums)
2020     CHAMPION    European Talent Cup (11 races, 5 wins, 10 podiums)
4th         Red Bull Rookies Cup (12 races, 1 win, 3 podiums)
2021     CHAMPION    Red Bull Rookies Cup (14 races, 6 wins, 10 podiums)
7th         JuniorGP (12 races, 2 podiums)
38th         Moto3 (1 race)
2022     7th         JuniorGP (10 races, 1 win, 1 podium)
44th         Moto3 (1 race)
2023     3rd         Moto3 (20 races, 4 wins, 8 podiums)
2024    CHAMPION    Moto3 (*** to date: 16 races, 10 wins, 11 podiums)

With Aspar Team: 114 races, 33 wins, 56 podiums
(*** to date)