Joel Esteban: One step back...and two steps forward?

Do you know the sentence “one step back to take two steps forward”? This concept also reflects the stories of several motorcycle racers who, at some point, chose or had to return to a lower category than the one they were competing in, or even to move from a world championship back to a national series. What's their main purpose? Simple: to redeem themselves and return to the category or championship they stepped down from, but with the hope of doing better than on their first attempt. A story, the one mentioned above, that could be lived as well by Joel Esteban.

Before stepping to the world stage

Let’s start at the end of 2023, when Joel Esteban was coming off two great seasons in the JuniorGP paddock (named MotoJunior from 2026 onwards).

After being runner-up in ESBK PreMoto3 in 2020 and finishing eighth in the European Talent Cup the following year, in 2022 the young Spaniard moved from Team IgaX to Team Aspar and became one of the main contenders of the ETC by winning the first three races, reaching the podium on several other occasions and fighting for the title with Guido Pini until the final race, eventually finishing second. This led Jorge “Aspar” Martínez to promote him to the Moto3 Junior World Championship in 2023, a year that Esteban finished with two victories, two more podiums and fourth place overall despite a few ups and downs.

And precisely towards the end of 2023, an important announcement came: Esteban would move up to the Moto3 World Championship in 2024, once again with the Valencia-based team and as teammate to David Alonso.

A troubled year

Esteban’s first races in the Moto3 World Championship were actually quite good. In the first five Grands Prix he finished 11th in Qatar, 8th in Portimão, 9th in Austin and, above all, 4th at Le Mans. Moreover, at Jerez (between the Austin and Le Mans GPs), Esteban fought for a top-five finish for much of the race, only to crash on the final lap. It was a promising start, one suggesting that we had another rookie who could improve and soon fight for important results.

Things, however, went differently after that. Following his fourth place at Le Mans, in Barcelona Esteban battled in the leading group and spent much of the race firmly inside the top ten. In the final laps, though, he and a few other riders lost ground, and in the end the Spanish rider finished only 14th, last in his group. From there came the downturn: in the fourteen races from Mugello to Barcelona, Esteban did no better than 13th at Silverstone. Towards the end of the season, he also suffered a fracture in this left scaphoid, which forced him to miss the Solidarity Grand Prix in Barcelona (where he was replaced by Marcos Uriarte). In the meantime, his teammate Alonso was beating the record of wins in a single season of the Moto3 WC, dominated the season and was crowned Moto3 World Champion.  

The final result? 17th place in the championship with 45 points, out of which 33 were scored in the first five Grands Prix, and only twelve over the rest of the season.

Step back and redemption

After failed negotiations with other teams in the Moto3 World Championship, Joel Esteban ultimately returned to the Junior World Championship for the 2025 season, staying with Team Aspar and hoping to relaunch his career. In the end, the season was not extraordinary, especially given the dominance of Brian Uriarte, but the young rider from Barcelona won the Magny-Cours race (a weekend marked by the passing of Borja Gómez), was consistently in the top five, and finished the championship in third place.

Above all, Esteban did not stay completely out of the Moto3 World Championship. The 20-year-old Catalan was in fact called several times to replace riders who were injured or absent due to health issues. Finally, he took part in a total of eight Grands Prix events and he often delivered convincing results: in Thailand, he secured ninth place with the Red Bull KTM Tech 3 team (replacing Jacob Roulstone) and in Qatar he was running in the top ten and close to the leaders with Team Aspar (standing in for Máximo Quiles), before he crashed halfway through the race.

But what proved that Esteban deserves a second chance in the MotoGP paddock, it was his outstanding performances at the Australian and Portuguese Grands Prix. At Phillip Island, where he stood in for Dennis Foggia, Esteban fought for the podium until the very end and missed it by just half a tenth against Álvaro Carpe. In Portimão, where he replaced Roulstone once again, Esteban not only astonished the crowd with overtakes and late braking, but after losing ground and falling back to 12th halfway through the race, he charged back in the final laps to finish fourth, once again very close to the podium. Two races that finished extremely well, and where the Spaniard showed a grit and fighting spirit that, perhaps, he hadn't shown to this extent yet on the world stage.

Initially, Esteban still seemed to be out of the Moto3 World Championship for the following year. However...

The return

On 13th of November 2025, in the middle of the season finale at Valencia, LEVELUP-MTA Team announced that Joel Esteban would partner Matteo Bertelle for the 2026 season. The news came as a surprise, also because the team had announced the re-signing of Marcos Uriarte a couple of months earlier (Uriarte was then sidelined, officially due to physical issues). Regardless of everything, this opportunity marks Esteban’s full-time return to the Moto3 World Championship. And, above all, he has the chance to prove that what we saw in 2024 wasn't truly him, and that he is now more mature and more confident of what he is capable of.

We will therefore see whether, for Joel Esteban, the return to JuniorGP in 2025 will truly have been the “step back followed by two steps forward".