Moto3: 2022 rookie profile – David Muñoz

David Muñoz steps up to the World Championship with a reputation of being a fighter.

At just 15-years-old David Muñoz has achieved more than most racers in the junior categories taking home P2 overall in the Red Bull Rookies this year and P3 overall in the FIM CEV Moto3 championship with four wins to his name and 12 podiums in both series’ combined. His age clearly means nothing when he is beating riders with many more years experience, his age does mean he will miss the first six rounds of the season and potentially seven, turning 16 on the day of the Le Mans Grand Prix, making his full debut at Mugello.

Muñoz is a fiery character there’s no doubt about that, his name holds a reputation of being a ‘wild one’, you will get many mixed reactions when you talk about him to riders who’ve raced against him, some say he’s young and learning, others straight-up hate his guts stating he is a danger to the rest of the field. These reactions are due to his extremely aggressive riding style, he attempts suicidal manoeuvres and doesn’t care about any rider that is in his way, think of it like Darryn Binder and Jeremy Alcoba’s love child if it was fed only steroids, you can see an example of that here, timestamp 11:13.

Muñoz on the beautiful Cardoso Racing Moto3 machine.

Despite this, it’s clear to see he’s a special talent, he’s been gifted with extraordinary speed and natural talent, riding the fairings off any bike he touches with incredible speed and precision, he absolutely knows this as you can tell from his aggressiveness on track. His age plays a huge part in this, at 15-years-old you don’t have much consideration for your fellow riders and why should you? If you let them past they will beat you, it’s not in a riders nature to be courteous to others on track who wouldn’t repay the same favour, Muñoz cares about one thing and one thing only. Winning.

There are no doubts he is set to stir the pot next year in the World Championship, if John McPhee thought he had it bad with Alcoba he’s seen nothing yet!

The Spaniard’s career has progressed incredibly quickly after starting to ride at 4 years old, he worked his way through the Spanish ranks and the Moto4 series’ to arrive in the European Talent Cup finishing up in P13 overall in 2018 before improving to P11 overall in 2019 with multiple podiums. From here the unusual choice was made to promote him to the CEV Moto3 series for 2020 despite not challenging for the title in the ETC for 2019, this move proved to be one of the best decisions ever made for his career.

The 64 will be a 44 next year due to a number clash with Mario Aji.

In 2020 Muñoz signed up to also race in the Red Bull Rookies and was rapid straight out of the gate taking a podium on his debut at only 15-years-old, he backed this up with more in the two rounds which followed to eventually come home as the series runner up behind the dominant Pedro Acosta as a class rookie with 6 podiums and 2 wins to his name, this rapid and also automatic speed was practically unheard of in the Red Bull Rookies, the only rider which comes to mind who has achieved this in recent years was Pedro Acosta himself and we’ve seen what he was able to do in the World Championship, Muñoz was a title favourite for 2021.

Over in the FIM CEV Moto3 class he made his debut coming home in P20 overall in a championship of 60+ riders across the season with a best result of P10, there was definitely room for improvement and the youngster knew this, 2021 was going to be his year.

Valencia fun, saving some front tyre tread.

As previously mentioned he transformed himself into an unstoppable force in 2021 becoming extremely aggressive and stopping at nothing to get what he wants on track and the results in 2021 proved this very nearly taking the Red Bull Rookies and CEV Moto3 titles which is a feat yet to be achieved by any rider, Pedro Acosta once again coming close to this in 2020 with the Rookies title and P3 overall in the CEV.

The fact we are comparing him to Pedro Acosta surely shows the level of talent this young rider has, if he can calm himself down and be more mature on track, he will be a future world champion.

Featured images – CEV Repsol / Gold and Goose – Red Bull Content Pool