'I have more' - Raul Fernandez on his MotoGP prime

Trackhouse Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez claimed the first of his two MotoGP victories at Phillip Island in October 2025. It was the then 24-year-old Madridleño‘s 77th start in the premier class, at the end of almost four drawn-out seasons, and he won by 1.4 seconds over Fabio Di Giannantonio, the most comprehensive success at the fast, flowing and flawed venue since 2019.

For Phillip Island it was another mini chapter in a litany of surprises, close racing, drama, rescheduling and unpredictable episodes that have helped enforce the track’s profile as one of the best, despite frightening high speeds (the second quickest on the calendar), questionable safety, frustrating climate changes, wildlife interruptions and scant infrastructure.

For Fernandez, the elusive ‘P1’ was vindication of his motorcycling talent and much-debated mentality in a MotoGP career that has bumped along in much the same chaotic flow as Phillip Island.

Yes, Fernandez is ‘another Spaniard’ but, like some of his countrymen (and unlike very few others), he really shifted through the grand prix ranks. In 2020 and 2021 he burned both Moto3 and Moto2, totalling 10 wins. There was a period of 23 rounds, bridging both divisions, where he only missed six podium ceremonies, but it was the record-breaking Moto2 campaign in 2021 where he really put his name on the shopping list for practically every factory team. He narrowly lost the title to KTM Ajo team-mate Remy Gardner by four points.

KTM had the two brightest racers outside of the MotoGP grid in their grasp and duly pushed both into the Tech3 garage. On 8 November 2020,Fernandez was celebrating his first GP win in Moto3 in Valencia. On 21 November 2021, less than a month after his 21st birthday, he was completing his first test as a MotoGP rider at Jerez. His trailblaze was so swift that he barely had time to let life catch up. Maturity, image, perception, even English language skills were not as developed as his ability to find a lap time.

“I don’t know why I was fast!” he smiles now about his acceleration through MotoGP’s foundation tiers. “It all came quite easy. What was a surprise to me was that in Moto2 I had an amazing team but straight away I was fighting for a championship, and I had to learn how to manage races with big bikes, I was not ready for MotoGP.

“It was something I never asked for or was thinking about at that moment,” he reflects now in the Trackhouse hospitality. “It’s difficult to know exactly why but I was not ready. I then had to do that [learning] again. I was not a top rider [in MotoGP] – not about performance – but in terms of experience. I did not have everything ‘under control’, so for that I tried to stay another year in Moto2. That first year or two in MotoGP, it was difficult to understand the situation I was in.”

Both rookies struggled. Both scored points just six times and Fernandez beat Gardner to 22nd in the championship. He broke away from a five-year KTM association to take Aprilia‘s long-standing contract for 2023, and what would become the American Trackhouse set-up. It was another change of circumstances for a young athlete and, although he improved to make five top ten appearances (including an encouraging 5th at Valencia for the ’23 season finale), he barely breached the top twenty of the series again.

He also dealt with injury, shoulder dislocation, arm-pump surgery, a crisis of confidence and a dwindling profile as the likes of Pedro Acosta and Augusto Fernandez emerged. 2024 brought more consistency but little of the firebrand that Fernandez had shown in Moto2. There was a danger that he’d missed his window. He was accumulating race mileage but (understandably) was still immature for the elite requirements of his profession. As journalists we were even asking Trackhouse why they had renewed his contract in 2024 when other riders were circulating for the final two-year cycle of the 1000cc era.

“He’s very hungry,” former Trackhouse team manager, and ex-GP racer, Wilco Zeelenberg this writer for the Motorcycle Grand Prix Insider Stories book, “and some go further than others. Raul is eager to perform and go over the limit.”

“What I lived in Moto3, one year of Moto2 and the first two in MotoGP makes me the rider I am now,” Fernandez says today. “I cannot explain too many things about the past…I had some experiences that were not so nice but I think I am a really strong rider in terms of mentality and for that reason I don’t want to change anything – or would want to – about my past.”

Those bad experiences had a lot to do with silencing external noise and calming inner anxieties, allowing him to trust more in Trackhouse and Aprilia. “Basically, what other people think; I don’t really care. If I listened to them then I would have left the bike to one side three years ago. But it’s difficult because we are young and we have to understand that people have their opinions. Some respect our job and some give their opinion in a bad sense, and I don’t really like that. I always listen to performance, and what was difficult was the [knowledge] that I was not competitive and what I had to do to become competitive. That was more difficult than what people say. I am very lucky because I have a very good group in my life and not just for motorsport; incredible people and they treat me like a person.”

One of those is his younger brother Adrian, two and a half years his junior, who races in Moto3, but there is not much professional crossover between the siblings; nothing as near as the Marquezes, Espargaros or (previously) the Binders. “I cannot tell him much because we are in very different categories. Over the years there have been changes, for example when I was in Moto3 we had Dunlops and now they have Pirellis so I cannot give my advice, and he cannot give me anything to understand what I need to be fast!”

Their parents are frequent visitors to grands prix but Fernandez’s eagerness to personally excel seems to have sprouted from an unknown source. “I am a super-strong boy with myself and I don’t know why because my parents never came to me and pushed me for better results,” he admits, in stark contrast to the domineering story of parental influence endured by team-mate Ai Ogura. “I never feel that they gave me pressure, to be honest, but even when I was young I could not sleep well in the night if I had a bad result. I was aggressive with myself and maybe that is one of the keys for why I am here now. It is difficult to explain why I am like that. I always feel bad if I cannot do something, like training. I want to make everything in my hands 100%. How do you say in English ‘perfectionista’?”

As a perfectionist, Fernandez must be tricky to live with in his Andorra residence. “Maybe for that I am living alone!” he smiles again. “It’s a negative…”

At 24, Fernandez finally graduated to a MotoGP podium threat in the second half of 2025, in what was his third term at Trackhouse. The lift came after what he described as a key conversation with team manager Davide Brivio, who had previously mentored the likes of Valentino Rossi, Maverick Viñales, Joan Mir and Alex Rins. The pair sat down at Jerez in Spain after Fernandez had taken DNF-15-12-17-15 at the first five rounds.

“With Davide it was a difficult situation because I didn’t really get the results we expected [at the time] and I was super-frustrated. We had a nice talk. I cannot, or I am not able to explain, all the things we talked about, but it was just like a conversation between friends but also a professional one. We had a compromise.”

At the next GP in France he was seventh in the wet and then only dropped out of the top 11 once for the rest of the year. A sprint podium finish in Indonesia cued up the approach to Phillip Island, without Jorge Martin or Marc Márquez in play and at a time when the Aprilia RS-GP was evolving into the best bike in MotoGP, although the parity also made distinction a little harder to achieve on a regular basis. Nonetheless the overdue chequered flag made him just the thirteenth rider on the current grid to have walked the top step in all three categories.

“I think the Phillip Island victory was too late,” he reflects. “If you told me in Moto2 that I would have to spend four years to get my first victory then I would never believe it because Moto3 was in the second year, Moto2 the third race…[but] these four years where I did not get the results, had bad moments, surgeries, it was worth it. It was the first thing I thought when I finished the race. It makes you want more podiums and victories, but people have to know that motorsport is not like it was five-six-seven years ago. Now you have different manufacturers that can win the title, private teams that six years ago was impossible to think of winning a championship, many riders who are every day more professional and more athletic.”