Augusto Fernández Guerra (Madrid, 1997) was crowned the new Moto2 champion this Sunday. At the Valencia GP, a mistake by title rival Ai Ogura at Turn 8 of Lap 8 secured him the championship. The Japanese Honda braked too hard and crashed his options in the most gruesome manner after losing a lot of wax in the early stages. “79 KO,” they marked him on the wall and on the bike’s electronic screen. Despite the emotional roller coaster, the Spaniard knew how to keep his head down to finish second in a race won by teammate Pedro Acosta, the season’s top rookie in the intermediate class. “I have no words to describe what I feel. I want to thank all the people who have supported me until I got here. I have yet to assimilate it,” Fernández explained after arriving at the closed park.
The new champion, who has lived in Mallorca since he was young, joins the list of famous island champions who also enjoyed Izan Guevara’s Moto3 crowning glory this year. Like the boy from Aspar and like Joan Mir, Fernández, from next Tuesday, a new Honda rider leaves the remarkable group of athletes trained at the Balearic Islands Sports Modernization Center (CTEIB). There, the Balearic Motorcycling Federation has reserved nine places among the 250 students from various disciplines. “Difficulties make us more creative. It’s harder to travel, to move. We jokingly call this the Ensaimada effect, but to be fair it has more to do with the barriers that the insularity has to overcome,” explains Rafa Cañellas, president of the organization. And Mir adds: “Great drivers come with a small circuit. Let’s see if the three of us see each other again soon.”
Fernández is 25 years old, but he is a veteran of racing in this category. Final success comes after six seasons in the intermediate class where an alternative path to MotoGP was forged. After clearing the title error, next year he will debut alongside the best on the back of a GASGAS, the Spanish brand created under the aegis of KTM, the factory that proclaimed the umpteenth Balearic Talent to the Start goes number one.
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Growing up in Pina, a town of 600 people, the pilot has achieved fame after following a different path than most great champions. “It was a mixture of economy and physicality,” recalls the father, his mainstay on the racetracks. His son was trained in a parking lot under the tutelage of Chico Lorenzo, father of three-time world champion Jorge Lorenzo, with whom he was 6 to 12 years old. They didn’t know him and by chance – they saw an advertising poster – he ended up at their school. During this formative period, he shared his adventures with his little brother Alejandro, who for years shared with him the first motocross bike brought to them by the Magi. After completing the training period, David Salom, cousin of the long-awaited Luis and runner-up in the Supersport category of Superbikes, secured him an invitation at the age of 13 to test his first big bike at Magny-Cours. The small displacement ones were too small for him and his fastest lap of the race and seventh place on a Kawasaki 250cc opened the doors of competition for him. “Since we couldn’t get into Moto3, the best option was to compete and try out world circuits as we didn’t have anything in Mallorca,” recalls his father. A year later, his son was named Junior European Champion in this category.
From then on he had to wake up, take advantage of the happy moments and overcome the bad moments that his path to success offered him. Two isolated events in consecutive years gave him the opportunity to test himself in the 2017 and 2018 Moto2 World Championship. They initially bet on him in the Speed Up. Despite his good performance, he remained without a starting place. The following year, Sito Pons thought of him when Héctor Barberá tested positive for alcohol and was removed from the team. In 2019, after claiming three wins and five podiums in his first full year, he cemented himself in the category with a respectable fifth place finish.
Augusto Fernández was named the new Moto2 champion this Sunday.JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
Spanish pilot Augusto Fernández celebrates victory with his team Biel Aliño (EFE)
Fernández is 25 years old, but he is a veteran of racing in this category. In the picture, the pilot (in the foreground) is congratulated by a team member: JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
After clearing the title error, next year he will debut alongside the best on the back of a GASGAS, the Spanish brand created under the aegis of KTM, the factory that proclaimed the umpteenth Balearic Talent to the Start goes number one. In the picture, the pilot celebrates his victory at the finish line. JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
Final success comes after six seasons in the intermediate class where an alternative path to MotoGP was forged. JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
Fernández celebrates his victory with the team JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
The new champion, who has lived in Mallorca since he was young, joins the list of famous island champions who also enjoyed Izan Guevara’s Moto3 crowning glory this year. JOSE JORDAN (AFP)
Growing up in Pina, a town of 600 people, the pilot has achieved fame after following a different path than most great champions. In the picture, team members congratulate the pilot JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
Injuries and Covid-19 took him off the radar in 2020 but he regained his best version when he replaced Álex Márquez at Marc VDS. In his first year with the team he convinced the heavyweights in Austria to take him to MotoGP.
At home, where he’s spent the last week feeling a bit nervous, Augusto enjoys cycling all over the island. With his physiotherapist and friend, former trials pilot Marc Horrach, they enjoy climbing the Sanctuary of Lluc, a beautiful enclave in the Serra de Tramuntana. “We stab a little between us, that’s typical. We like to go there and stop for a moment for a coffee and a toast,” explains the preparer. All highlight Fernandez’s ability to handle pressure very well, as well as the ease with which he adapts to changes in methodology and staff in the garage. His mother, a yoga teacher, also taught him exactly how to channel emotions. With a certain charisma and a tendency to joke, he plans to continue living on his land and close to his friends from school in Sencelles. There, around 500 people gathered at the municipal sports center this Sunday to see their compatriot triumph in Valencia. Another 30, members of his fan club, celebrated the Alirón from the stands and welcomed him with two jerseys on the track. The boy is known as the Sencelles rabbit because he slept clutching a stuffed animal as a child.
Nine podiums and four wins later and with scares like the fall that landed him in tow with Ogura in Australia, Augusto can celebrate fulfilling his dream of reaching MotoGP and becoming World Champion: “This is what we do everyone’s been getting in this mess since we were kids”. Together with his family, who accompanied him on the occasion, he shed tears of joy after so many sacrifices.
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The other Mallorcan champion of the circuit achieved an unprecedented milestone in Moto3, winning at Valencia and completing the Spanish World Cup winning streak, his fifth of the season. The 18-year-old pilot, who was even more renegade than Turkey’s Deniz Öncü, said goodbye to his big year in style. After his rival passed him with an aggressive move on the last lap, Guevara kept his cool and calculated an open trajectory into the final corner to shoot to victory. Behind him, his teammate at Aspar, Sergio García-Dols, finished third, capping his team’s great year by being runner-up in the World Championship.
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