KTM announces the signing of Pol Espargaró to ride with GasGas-Tech3

Hervé Poncharal, owner of the French Tech3 structure, KTM’s satellite, confirmed at an official press conference held in Austria that Pol Espargaró will ride next season in the new GasGas-Tech3 team, which will compete with the RC16 prototype and identical material that the official pilots of Mattighofen.

“A few years ago there was a young Moto2 champion who joined MotoGP with Tech3 (then with Yamaha), his name is Pol Espargaró, we had a wonderful few years discovering the queen class. He is a fighter and a main player in the KTM program, I am pleased to announce that he is returning to the family and will be the perfect ambassador for the GasGas brand, welcome back. I am delighted with the project, with Pol’s help we cannot get off to a better start. I am already looking forward to November”, explained Poncharal shortly after explaining, together with Pit Beirer, sports director of KTM, and Hubert Trunkenpolz, CEO of GasGas, that next season the second team of the Austrian manufacturer will run with the colors of the Spanish brand, already present in Moto2 and Moto3 associated with Aspar.

Espargaró, who rode four years with KTM, returns to the orange orbit after two frustrating seasons at Repsol Honda, where he has not been able to meet the expectations that had been set.

For now, the GasGas team has made one of its two riders public, although Pierer introduced a note of drama by assuring that they kept the door open for the Portuguese Miguel Oliveira to follow.

“The return of Pol is great news, he is the rider who took the risk at the start with KTM and I welcome him back,” said Beirer, who asked for a little more time to introduce the second rider, leaving the open door to Portuguese.

“We are basically repeating the offer we made to him, we keep him informed, we know that it is not the easiest option, perhaps he did not understand what we were offering him at the beginning, but now with this new project on the table he can understand that we are giving him a role as a factory rider”, he said in reference to Oliveira, although everything indicates that Miguel has already signed a contract with Aprilia to ride in the RNF team and that it will be announced as of September 1, since for contractual reasons you can do it earlier.

The most likely, right now, is the continuity as a rider in the Tech3 team of the Australian Remy Gardner, who this year makes his debut in the premier class with Austrian machinery after being Moto2 world champion in 2021.

Despite the fact that GasGas assures that you put the name of the team and the motorcycle, and that they enter as manufacturers “we are a GasGas factory team with a GasGas motorcycle”, said Trunkenpolz, the truth is that in the medium term all the material will be identical to that of KTM .

“In the short term this is the basis and we are clear about it, first we have to take a step further in the competition, but in the future we don’t know. For now we have to stay within the regulations and in the short term they will be identical bikes”, he confirmed. Pierer.

Pol Espargaro, GasGas Factory Racing