Morbidelli, you again? Aleix Espargaró: "I couldn’t believe it

Monday, 17 November 2025 at 18:00

Espargaro an unwitting protagonist before the MotoGP race start in Valencia: Morbidelli did it all by himself.

As the riders were lining up on the grid for Sunday’s race, Franco Morbidelli made a move rarely seen in MotoGP or other championships. He hit another rider, Aleix Espargaro, and fell: unfortunately, he suffered a fracture to his left hand and will not be able to take part in the Valencia test.

As fate would have it, Morbidelli made contact with Espargaro, with whom he already had previous incidents. It must be said that the Spaniard bears no responsibility; he was in his grid box and was rear-ended by his colleague.

MotoGP Valencia, Morbidelli–Espargaro incident: Aleix speaks

The HRC test rider recounted how he experienced that pre-race moment when the Pertamina VR46 rider hit him and fell: "When I felt the impact - reports Motosan - and I saw Morbidelli on the ground, I couldn’t believe it. I was sorry, because seeing a rider down on the grid in the last race of the year is not nice. You have to be more careful. He destroyed the bike, bent the exhaust, the brakes, the devices... If he had hit my foot, he would have destroyed it. He has a serious injury, I’m very sorry and I hope he recovers soon."

With his action, Morbidelli damaged Espargaro’s Honda RC213V, and the latter explained the consequences were significant: "When I felt the impact, I turned to see the damage and I saw pieces of his wings in my exhaust pipe. I tried to remove them, but one piece stayed inside and that’s what was later expelled. The problem was that the ride-height device wasn’t working, the bike wouldn’t accelerate because the exhaust pipe was bent, I had no engine brake because the exhaust valve was torn, the footpeg was moving a lot and touching in right-handers, until the bolt came loose and I had to retire."

Honda moves from category D to C in concessions

Luca Marini’s seventh place in the Valencia race cost Honda its D rank in MotoGP concessions, moving up to C and therefore giving up certain freedoms it had over the past two years to develop the RC213V. Would it have been better if Marini had settled for eighth? Espargaro responds as follows: "In my opinion, no. I think it’s a matter of culture, of ego. It’s the biggest manufacturer in this championship and little by little it has to climb up to rank A. This is Honda, and it must be as high as possible. From my point of view, it’s a dishonor to be in group D. We’ve had a very good year, Honda has worked very hard, bringing many updates, making a huge effort, building a test team that is a MotoGP team. I think it was logical to achieve this goal."

Moving from D to C has these consequences:

losing the ability to test on any track, limited instead to a list of three;
having fewer tyres available, dropping from 260 to 220;
only test riders may run in private tests; factory riders can no longer be used;
the number of seasonal engines available drops from 10 to 8;
engine development becomes frozen; previously it was open;
only one aerodynamic update allowed during the year; previously there were two.