ASPAR SAYS ALONSO-HOLGADO RIFT STEMS FROM REPEATED CLASHES

CFMOTO Aspar team owner Jorge “Aspar” Martínez has moved to address the public dispute between Moto2 teammates David Alonso and Daniel Holgado, saying their conflict is personal rather than a sign of trouble within the team.

The tension became public at Phillip Island, where Alonso told DAZN he had “no relationship” with Holgado. The pair had already clashed at the Indonesian Grand Prix, prompting Alonso to criticise his teammate in the media. Both are due to move up to MotoGP next year.

Martínez said Alonso’s remarks had gone too far. He attributed the outburst to frustration, saying Alonso wanted to end the season strongly but had not been getting the results he hoped for. He also pointed to a history of incidents between the riders: “Over the past two years, he’s had three collisions with Dani and knocked him off three times.”

In Martínez’s view, the clashes reflect the intensity of having two ambitious winners on the same team. “When you have two good riders, two winners, this sort of thing has always happened,” he said, while insisting that the team itself was functioning well.

However, the disagreement has built over time and has affected life around the paddock. Martínez said the riders had already been kept apart in the team’s trucks and given separate rooms, among other measures, before the latest confrontation. He described the accumulated incidents as leading to the current dispute.

With five Grands Prix remaining, Martínez hopes the season can still finish positively. He plans to speak to Alonso and Holgado individually, rather than address the team as a whole. “I’ll sit down with them separately and give each of them a slap because they deserve it,” he said, adding that both are “great riders and great people” but that their behaviour had been out of line.