It’s been a seismic fortnight for the MotoGP rider market, and with some key pieces now in place, the rest of the 2023 picture could be set to form rapidly.
Aprilia kicked things off by confirming Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales for two more years in Italy, but Yamaha secured the year’s biggest signing by holding onto Fabio Quartararo until the end of 2024.
The Frenchman confirmed he’d extracted guarantees of improvements from next season in response to his complaints of a lack of power, an one can only imagine his bump in salary too given he had Iwata over a barrel. He’s the only rider capable of handling the M1 — in Barcelona Darryn Binder and Franco Morbidelli were next best in 12th and 13th, and there were five early crashes ahead of them — and has scored 100 per cent of the marque’s manufacturers championship points this season.
Combined with RNF defecting to Aprilia next season, leaving Yamaha with only its two factory bikes on the grid next season, the team really needed the win of retaining the world champion, and by taking the season’s biggest fish off the market, the next phase of contract agreements has been set in motion.
DUCATI CASTS OUT JACK MILLER
Speculation started before the season even got underway, but all signs are that Jack Miller is on the way out of Ducati and most likely bound for KTM. The Race has reported he already has a two-year deal stitched up with the Austrian marque, to be announced imminently.
But the pre-season rumours haven’t been exactly on the money. While expectations after 2021 were for Jorge Martin to walk into a factory seat, Enea Bastianini’s three wins — still the most of any rider this year — have made him an almost irresistible prospect.
But nor is it as simple as the results suggest. Martin’s right-arm nerve damage has been a major contributor to his four DNFs this season, and he’s set for surgery to fix the issue this week with the intention of being fit for the last two races, in Germany and Netherlands, before the mid-season break.
If Borgo Panigale is yet to reach a decision, these last two races could be the straight shootout it needs to make up its mind.
“I don’t know much,” Martin said of his contract situation before the Catalan Grand Prix. “If we look at the results from the outside, it seems easy to choose the second factory seat, while from the inside it’s not the same, and that’s why Ducati has a hard time choosing.
“Pramac remains an option, and I think about it, even if the goal is a factory bike in a factory team.”
Either way, both riders will enjoy a factory-spec bike next season given their reputations.
KTM COULD FIELD TWO AUSSIES
Miller’s forecast arrival at KTM will displace Miguel Oliveira despite the Portuguese rider having been told his seat was safe earlier in the season.
Strictly speaking it was the truth — he was offered a contract that would leave open the option of being switched to Tech3, which Miller’s impending announcement would have triggered.
But Oliveira, despite having ridden a KTM in every class of his professional career, wasn’t having any of it.
“I told the management that I do not accept the Tech3 spot and I want my factory seat,” he said when KTM motorsport director Pit Beirer publicly raised the potential line-up shake-up. “Definitely no.”
With that kind of definitiveness, one can only assume the 27-year-old is confident in his alternatives.
He’s been most heavily linked to Bastianini’s Gresini seat, which would complete a neat three-way cycle that started with Enea pushing Miller off his factory Ducati.
LCR could also be an option if the team were to bite the bullet and drop Alex Márquez.
But who, then, will ride at Tech3?
Raúl Fernandez looks like he finally has his way clear to jump to RNF after a difficult opening phase to his rookie season, which would displace Darryn Binder in the process.
Remy Gardner is favourite to be retained as the more consistent of the two, but he has the potential barrier of a manager who’s rubbed Beirer up the wrong way for criticising the “shit” money on offer at KTM.
“I would like to stay in Tech3 KTM and in the MotoGP paddock,” Gardner told Speedweek. “I hope KTM intends to renew the contract with me. I‘m not very focused on this topic at the moment; I prefer to focus on improving my results.”
Assuming that unpleasantness is overcome — and the team has said it would like to renew ties — Gardner will likely get the benefit of partnering with a more experienced teammate who’ll help accelerate his and the team’s development.
HONDA BOOSTS CHAMPIONSHIP FIREPOWER
That senior rider is almost certain to be Pol Espargaró, whose welcome has officially expired at Honda.
His position has been shaky virtually all year, but the writing was scrawled clearly on the wall in Barcelona, where he was bypassed to receive Marc Márquez’s Mugello development parts in favour of LCR’s Takaki Nakagami — hardly the sort of thing a team would do to a factory rider with even a short-term future.
Joan Mir’s availability after Suzuki’s sudden announcement to withdraw was the nail in Espargaró’s coffin. The 2020 champion is reportedly — and clearly — close to concluding the switch, though he was reticent to be drawn on the matter in Barcelona.
It guarantees the Japanese marque at least one world champion in the hopefully unlikely event Márquez is unable to return to his prepandemic after his latest surgery.
At satellite team LCR the situation is less clear. Nakagami is still almost certainly outbound, albeit his reception of those new parts in Barcelona is an obvious sign that he’ll stay within the Honda fold outside MotoGP. Ai Ogura, second in the Moto2 standings, is sure to take his place short of a collapse in form.
Alex Márquez hasn’t turned the pressure of potentially losing his seat into any particularly great upturn in form and still have just two top-10 finishes to his name, putting him behind even his apparently outgoing teammate.
Will the uncertainty and change in the rest of the Honda line-up and dearth of alternatives be enough to have him retained as a vestige of consistency? Perhaps — although one wonders whether, if Somkiat Chantra can build some consistency into his season, Honda might be tempted to plump for two rookies in an expanded Idemitsu-backed line-up. Motosprint has even reported that Honda Asia was looking at ways to become more involved in the premier class.
APRILIA’S NEW SATELLITE
All that brings us back to where the last fortnight really started — Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales renewing ties with Aprilia for two seasons. While Espargaró’s signature was no surprise despite his downcast talk in the preceding weeks, Viñales’s two-year extension raised some eyebrows, but clearly the team has faith that the younger Spaniard’s brighter spots this season can be expanded upon over a longer tenure.
But the biggest news of Aprilia’s weekend of announcements was that it was inducting Yamaha defector RNF into its orbit as a satellite team. The Sepang squad will run end-2022 machinery next season, and Noale will have a say in its riders.
Álex Rins is reportedly close to agreeing to terms to race this season’s most surprisingly competitive bike, and Raúl Fernandez is likely to join him to form a better balanced mix of experience and youth compared to this season.
Andrea Dovizioso has talked openly about wrapping up at the end of the year, while Darryn Binder, despite his gradual improvements, has been open to dropping down to Moto2 — which was originally his plan for this season — to build up experience for another bite at the premier class.
THE WILDCARDS
There are two potential curve balls still to come: Celestino Vietti, the current Moto2 title leader, and Pedro Acosta, the highly rated KTM junior.
Vietti is in the Valentino Rossi talent pipeline and might’ve been an obvious replacement for Luca Marini at VR46, but the MotoGP sophomore’s performance have picked up markedly in the last month, and he now leads not only teammate Marco Bezzecchi but also Pol Espargaró and both LCR riders. Squeezing in the potential Moto2 champion is suddenly a more difficult proposition.
The pressure to accelerate Acosta’s rise has been moderated by a slow start to his campaign, but a win in Mugello teased the 18-year-old’s maximum potential. Nonetheless, short of a stunning run to the end of the season, he seems likely to extend his stay in the intermediate class for at least another year.
