How radio communications are set to change MotoGP forever from 2027

Amidst all the work and pressure in the paddock at the Aragon Grand Prix there was another company making an unusual request to riders. Under the gaze of Sergi Sendra, the Media Production Technology Senior Director at MotoGP Group, an audio-specialist firm lined up at least 13 racers for a personalised mould of their ears. The customisation was for the forthcoming rollout of the new radio systems that will become prevalent next season.

Sendra, a TV and media tech passionate, former live TV director and visionary of onboard camera tech, and his team have been pioneering the technology for more than six years; with all the setbacks, frustrations and progress that innovation entails.

“2020 was the first time that [now Deputy CEO] Carlos Ezpeleta, then from the Sporting Dept, requested if we could do a test with riders listening on track, and I remember we were initially worried about the radio frequency and the coverage,” Sendra told Motor Sport exclusively. “Also to have something small enough to go into the hump of the leathers to be able to send messages at the same time.

“Our goal, and still the first priority, was to message riders for safety reasons,” he explains. “And when you send a red flag notification, it must arrive to all riders at the same time with no delay and that means digital transmission audio, which is IP and not analogue. Even some experts in this field we spoke with could not believe how hard that was to achieve. Messaging 22 riders instantly, wherever they are on track, with high-quality audio was another discovery. You cannot go and buy equipment for this. You have to invent it.”

The scale of the project was vast. Collaboration of the stakeholders was required, from the riders to the teams, to race direction, FIM, helmet and leathers manufacturers, circuits for infrastructure and then carefully selected technical partners that could engage their own R&D and nuance to fabricate the hardware, software and embrace national and governmental policies for frequencies.

The first notch on the dial was the riders. All MotoGP racers use earplugs to combat the din of unsilenced bikes that venture near the FIM noise limit of 130db. “They are so ridiculously loud,” Red Bull KTM’s Brad Binder told us in Aragon. “On the grid when everyone’s in the limiter, it’s serious. So, you appreciate the extra help from the earplugs.”

MotoGP Group’s development arch involved in-ear pieces, speakers, bone conduction, hard, F1-style moulds and eventually landed on the soft compound that has given the radio scheme some traction to push ahead.

“The project is huge because you have 22 riders, so 22 opinions and preferences, which are the most important ones because they need to carry the equipment and react,” Sendra says. “We have 11 teams that need to update their technology because what they have today is old and obsolete. It needs to be networked and to diversify; if we want to talk to Ducati then we need a Ducati channel; if you want to speak to them all then you need that capability.

“The first layer was the rider and to have an independent communications ‘system’. Then the head: how do we put the microphones and the earplugs without affecting the homologation of the helmet? That was a massive ‘stopper’ because the FIM have their new safety standards and they are fighting their own battle to have the best protection in the world. This is normal, we have to respect that.”

The testing process with riders was far from simplistic. “If you want to test something, then you need to do it at a GP and when all the assets and all the framework is in place,” Sendra reveals. “We had limited opportunities. So, we also had to go to a lot of private tests; riding with [Dani] Pedrosa and [Michele] Pirro – Pirro helped us a lot – the Espargaro brothers and [Lorenzo] Savadori. You need the conditions of a GP: all the people, the antennas, the phones. A real scenario that is often unique, limited and restricted. It slowed the process a lot.”

“It’s not easy to develop sometimes with athletes that are super focused on racing, and everyone is saying: ‘I don’t want new stuff, I don’t want to try anything’,” explained KTM test rider Pol Espargaro. “I’ve been helping him and telling Sergi: ‘keep going’.”

After rejecting inner ear options (a common ground could not be reached among the riders), bone conduction was then also problematic. Sendra: “In the winter of 2022 I went to Japan and to our partner Audio-Technica. We looked for something different from the in-ear and tried the bone conduction. We started testing with riders but it was painful and made pressure, so we realised that we had to develop something that adapts to the helmets.”

Speakers – the sort of tech that will be familiar to standard motorcyclists with Bluetooth – also bit the dust. “We had a little Japanese speaker that looked so innocent but putting it into the cheekpad was a nightmare because none of the cheekpads from the ten helmet manufacturers on the grid were the same!” Sendra says, rolling his eyes. “Some were OK for a direct placement but other pads had a hole. So how do you hold the speaker? It was painful for some and ineffective for others. We made five generations of speaker: different material, smaller dimensions, amplifying with more power. In parallel, we were working with Marelli for the small unit in the hump to improve the quality of the technology: we spent three years on that alone.”

MotoGP Group finally had a breakthrough with the soft compound that also integrated in-ear tech. The sound had to be just right and fit into the racer’s ‘internal space’. Sendra: “It had to be comfortable; if not that, then it makes no sense to keep going. It had to have a good level and good quality. Riders have to be able to do their job. Generally, in life, if the audio around you is bad or disruptive, you get stressed. It has to be part of your environment. We knew we needed the best intercom for people to listen perfectly.

“Pirro was one of the first to have moulds from Barcelona and we were nearly crying when he came in at a test and said: ‘It’s perfect’. After that we thought we had it, but we needed more opinions. We believed we had something that worked but we are still developing. It’s not finished.”

“It combines our usual earplug with the mould,” Aspar Moto2 star David Alonso told Motor Sport. “The cover will end up being bigger and block out even more noise, which is great for me because I don’t like to hear the bike.”

A remedy for the riders gained increasing rates of approval. But Sendra and his team also had to split their attention. Narrowing down the providers helped prevent some of the alleged dropout and inconsistencies seen in F1 with different companies forming the radio service on the grid. MotoGP had to persuade the teams to upgrade.

“We are also testing with them and it has been three years of telling them they need to change and invest…but we said we’d help and make it easy and provide the best solution as well as taking care of frequencies, which is another nightmare because each country has different management.” The circuits from Argentina to Australia was yet another remit. “You need to finalise the equipment for the coverage of the antennas for any rider to have constant transmission and reception at any point. It was another goal we achieved because you simply cannot install another network on top of the onboard cameras and television and the track limits. So, we had to convince the circuits to have another simple fibre connection. Some already had it, others not. We needed the infrastructure. There were some great people in the MotoGP Group dedicated to that,” Sendra stresses.

Like the previous ‘shoulder cams’ and ‘back cams’ (that seem to have been displaced as the leather suit ‘humps’ will now carry the GPS and audio unit), riders will become independent ‘broadcasters’ and join a total of more than 200 microphones that already exist in and around a MotoGP grand prix. In F1 the audio connection to the driver is severed the moment he leaves the car. Not so in MotoGP. “The riders will be listening and talking wherever they are. This is going to be a massive change and interesting for strategy. The sacrifice is the rider carrying 200g, at most, inside the helmet and the suit.”

They will eventually carry two microphones. One in the helmet and another in the leathers. “F1 drivers have a balaclava that holds the microphone, so it is always close to the mouth. That’s impossible here and the only guy I saw who tried with one vomited afterwards,” Sendra says. The suit equipment will deactivate when the helmet is in place. “There is distance with both, which is a problem, and the wind is brutal in the helmet,” Sendra says. “We experimented with Fabio [Quartararo]…and the audio was dirty but understandable. It’s a nice challenge to develop that.”

A notable test dummy for the suit mic was Marc Márquez, and at a crucial moment: when the Catalan won the 2025 world championship in Japan. “We implemented our AudioCom network in three days,” recalls Sendra, with a smile. “It was also karma in this process: we had been working and learning and we bet on the system. We explained to Marc that we should be able to hear him shout and celebrate if he won the championship…but we had no guarantee that it would work. We had the prototype system from Marelli, the microphone from Audio-Technica that had never been used. We crossed our fingers and this amazing test scenario came up.”

“I did not want to be in the TV room that day. I wanted to be with the audio technician. As Marc crossed the finish line and won the title, I said: ‘Push up the faders!’ We heard Marc screaming ‘Ho he fet!’ [I did it]. I was crying. The bike goes down on RPM but Marc was standing up from the bike and was shouting so the audio was perfect.”

When it comes to any advancement or change, promoters tend to think whether they could rather than whether they should. We all know elite-level motor sports involve focus, concentration, flow, adrenaline and motorcycle racers have existed inside the insulating cocoon of a helmet since forever. Disrupting that mode with exterior audio is a concern for some.

“It depends on what the message is and when it appears,” Espargaro opined to Motor Sport. “The messages at the moment are safety ones and come in a place like a long straight: that’s fine. Maybe the rider gets used to it…and in the short term we can get some more information [away from the pitboard and dash]. At the moment, as soon as I tried on the straights it’s not too bad.”

“Some riders are still sceptical,” Sendra claims. “Some said: ‘don’t talk to me’. There is an unwritten rule that you could not talk to them while riding but we tried sending them messages randomly during test laps and none of them said it was dangerous.

“Some of them said they preferred not to hear us in certain places,” he goes on. “For example, in Misano, the back straight section is hard and fast and Fabio [Quartararo] said he preferred not to hear us while going through ‘Curvone’. Alex Rins said the same at some sections of Mugello. If you have to tell them ‘red flag!’ then you have to pay attention. Then it will be in the hands of the teams and we have to be clever how we manage because we can see where the riders are. The hump system will connect them to GPS. It is not the first time we put GPS into a leather suit because the airbags are activated by it but it’s the first time they can be tracked live.”

The next phase will then be opening two-way functionality. This feeds into the concept of the show. For some, F1’s radio interjections in TV coverage and other content are still gimmicky and lack authenticity. Others appreciate the extra level of inclusion as the race unfolds and there have been spicy moments of interaction. F1 and radios have become commonplace for two decades but for MotoGP it will be a dimension of the series that will redefine how people understand and digest the racing.

“I think it will be a great story component,” Sendra states. “So far, we’ve only been doing a ‘silent cinema’ with MotoGP, where you only hear the engines of the bikes. That’s all.”

“It’s a big change that I don’t know if we need, but we need to try, so let’s see,” Francesco Bagnaia shrugged.