"I'm not going to race as a professional, I'm just going to train with them": Aleix Espargaró puts cycling aside to focus on motorcycles

Aleix Espargaró has confirmed that he is leaving behind his brief stint as a professional cyclist within the Lidl-Trek structure. The Honda test rider, who this year tried to balance his work in motorcycling with his passion for cycling, recently explained that the Japanese brand asked him to focus entirely on his role as a tester. “Alberto Puig told me that he understood my passion for bikes very well, but that this is Honda and I needed to be more focused. He was absolutely right; I was probably wrong,” he acknowledged.

Aleix Espargaró ends his adventure as a professional cyclist at Honda's express request

Espargaró signed with Lidl-Trek at the beginning of the season in a move that was as unexpected as it was media-friendly. From the start, it was noted that his incorporation had an obvious promotional component, but it also opened the door to discovering how far an elite athlete could go who, despite coming from motorcycling, has always trained like any other cyclist.

The truth is that Aleix stepped up on his own merit, integrated into the team's training camps, took on WorldTour level training loads, and officially debuted in competition with the structure, until then American. His professional debut came at the Vuelta a Austria, but his adventure was affected from the very beginning by accidents.

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First, he suffered a fall that forced him to abandon the race and, when he was trying to regain his feelings in September, the final blow came when a hard fall during training made him have to rule out his participation in the GP of Hungary: “I arrived shattered with three broken vertebrae from the bike,” he recalled this weekend. That incident was the turning point.

According to the rider himself, it was then that Honda communicated to him that he should prioritize his work in MotoGP: “I didn’t know how to calibrate my role as a tester. I thought I could be in both worlds, and that’s not the case.” During that period, he could hardly train: “In the last two months, I’ve hardly been able to get on a bike; I’ve been living in Malaysia doing tests,” he commented.

Despite closing the chapter on professional cycling, Espargaró will not break his ties with Lidl-Trek. The Spaniard has confirmed that he will remain integrated into the team, although only as part of the training and activities of the group, without numbers or a calendar:  “Next year I will continue with the team, but I will not race as a professional; I will only train with them and I will be more focused on Honda,” he assured.

The reason is clear: his role as a tester is intensifying. Honda wants him to lead the dual development, the 2026 bike and the 2027 prototype, which will already incorporate Pirelli tires, requiring total dedication. “They asked me to focus much more on the testing work next year,” he confirmed.

Thus, a stage as short as it is intense comes to a close, marked by Aleix's competitive spirit, his historic cycling debut, and ultimately by injuries that have forced him to prioritize. The Catalan will continue to ride a bike, but far from professional competition.