MotoGP's 'drain game' and how riders keep their bodies supple for speed

One of MotoGP’s greatest visual characteristics is the transparency of the human physicality necessary for the job. The manhandling of 157kg motorcycles, acceleration that outstrips an F1 car, nearly 2g of braking force, peak heart rate figures for sustained periods and the steeliness to deal with an average of 10-11 crashes per season, usually close to or over 100mph.

Strength and coordination, reflexes and concentration are key for an existence measured by tenths of a second. Like most modern elite competitors, MotoGP racers are now highly trained and knowledgeable athletes for conditioning, nutrition and the possibilities of human physiology for extreme sport performance. They have the ‘tools’ to deal with 225mph at Mugello, the constant turning and lean angles of the Sachsenring and the braking demands of Motegi.

Last weekend, the 2.5km Balaton Park course, a facility close to Lake Balaton and south of Budapest that opened in 2023, presented a confined and limiting test for the first Hungarian Grand Prix since 1992. The layout was pancake flat. The 17 turns involved three flop-flop chicanes; the biggest quantity for any single venue on the calendar. The longest straight was 400m in length. In Hungary, MotoGP would hit sixth gear once a lap. “It’s clearly way too small,” opined Monster Energy Yamaha‘s Fabio Quartararo. “It’s just a strange track,” squinted HRC’s Luca Marini. “It doesn’t suit a MotoGP bike very well, but it’s OK. It’s another kind of race…”

Arms, shoulders, back, hips and hands (there are quite a few buttons and levers to handle on a 2025 MotoGP bike) are all working in unison to reach over 50-degree lean angles and hit apexes. Apart from resetting or plating bones, the most common medical procedure undertaken by the 22 riders on the grid is the fasciotomy, or in other words, the ‘arm pump’ operation, designed to remove the fascia muscular sheath. Twenty-one year-old Pedro Acosta, last Sunday’s Grand Prix runner-up and negotiating only his second premier class season, was the latest to receive the distinctive forearm scar on his right limb. “The best decision that I have [made] in the last couple of months,” he said on Friday at Balaton. “For me, it was not that normal to have an arm pump on a MotoGP bike. But okay, it arrived. Now, I’m super-comfortable.”

Balaton was frugal with racing lines, and overtaking became an exact science. The track forced MotoGP machinery to become ‘caged tigers’, but there was also a technical demand: the slightest miscalculation in corner entry and braking cost dearly. A graver mistake meant a trip into the pristine and deep gravel traps as the bikes were heaved by arms and shoulders from left to right and back again. “It is a little bit more work in the slow change of direction,” offered Marini, who at 6ft is one of the tallest riders in MotoGP. “Every time you need to lean more, it is a long request to your body to go to the other side. I tried to sit a bit more in the middle of the bike and not go fully down with the elbow, and then to the other elbow. It is a bit of a downside to be so tall…”

There is also science for MotoGP ‘prep’. Acosta is a lifelong Red Bull representative and therefore has access to the revered Athlete Performance Centre (APC) with branches in Austria and Los Angeles. The advanced structures are renowned for baseline measurement and maintenance of Red Bull sportspeople. Since 2023, the organisation has had its own dedicated full-time physio in the MotoGP paddock.

Italian Flavio Dromi looks after the bodies (and occasionally minds) of Red Bull KTM‘s line-up in MotoGP and the Moto2 and Moto3 classes. Other racers will either have their own crew (Valentino Rossi‘s VR46 Academy have its own staff) or they use MotoGP Health Centre for treatment. Sports psychology is still a fertile ground for discovery and ‘gains’, and seems to be a quiet, personal and indispensable part of an athlete’s foundations, the need for physical upkeep is nevertheless essential through the five days riders will be at a grand prix circuit.

“Our physio sorts out the triceps and forearms,” reveals Red Bull KTM‘s Brad Binder, “because the rest of the body doesn’t really pull too many amps, and even if it does, it doesn’t matter. The biggest thing is to make sure your arms don’t get to the point where you feel like you’re hanging on [to the bike] because then you ride s**t. So, it’s better to keep everything loose.”

“It keeps changing, depending on the weekends,” says Red Bull KTM test rider Pol Espargaro, who has had to fill in for the injured Maverick Viñales for at least two GPs this season and rode to an eighth place at Balaton. “For example, at Mugello with high changes of direction, all the riders complain about triceps. I normally struggle with my neck. I always bring my pillow with me [to races] because of my crashes…my cervicals are OK, but I struggle with it. And the legs. Normally, I’m a guy that rides the bike a lot with the legs, with the quadriceps. But every rider is different and every track is another ‘world’. The physio helps a lot.”

“I’m always working on the back and right arm. Nothing more,” championship leader and Hungarian winner Marc Márquez says, emphasising the level of damage his broken humerus caused and the extent of the expensive operations to get it usable more than two years ago. “Especially the right side is the one that I work more during the weekend to keep it stable.”

“We make [treat] all the body but normally we put a lot of effort from the shoulder to the hands,” Acosta says. “Because normally these three fingers on the right hand become like… [numb]. If you get carpal tunnel, that’s what causes it. I was having this before the surgery on the arms, with the bicycle even, and we worked a lot to open this thing [the median nerve]. To not have this feeling because it’s become tough to even ride, you know?”

Dromi is tall, imposing, bearded and strong. He looks like the kind of man who should be dealing out pain rather than curing it. 2025 is his third season of providing attention at the circuits, usually from a private office inside one of the KTM office trucks. “I try to help the guys stay healthy with their muscular system because MotoGP is a tough sport for the arms but also the whole body,” he says. “I usually perform a session each day for each rider to reduce the tension and be ready for the next time on track. We try to prevent problems. If there are issues then we try to fix them or decrease them, like pain or stiffness through muscle tissue release. We also try and have maximum mobility in the joints, so they are comfortable while riding because the bike is demanding for stress and for strength.

“They need to be very flexible because they have to manage the bike with the body; their positioning for the turns – opening the hips and pressurising the other side of the bike- but also to tuck in for the straight,” he adds. “Then the forearms and the shoulders; there are many tracks where the demands are on the upper body, and some where it is on the lower body. It depends on the layout and number of left/right turns. They do a lot of mobility sessions. They need to be relaxed but also very powerful.”

Dromi’s biggest constraint is time. Between sessions, technical debriefs and marketing commitments, the riders simply cannot lie on his table for long. “Sometimes it is more about the placebo effect because fixing a problem can be impossible in the time frame of a GP,” he admits. “It’s about management; some therapy and understanding the problem and finding a solution for the rider to be able to perform the best he can. Back pain means it’s very uncomfortable to ride these kinds of machines, but we can work to the point where they can manage for one race without medication.

“Using painkillers is not a preference because riders want full control, and to know how and where they can push too their limits. Medical therapy can sometimes create dizziness and mean a loss of focus. The riders prefer to manage the pain, and we also have a natural painkiller in our body called adrenaline. They might have pain before getting on the bike, but then the heart rate goes up and adrenaline comes and then they can manage. Pain can affect the riding style but sometimes not…and riders have told me they only started to suffer again when they got off the bike.”

The most common physical ailment or injury for riders is contusions. “The leather suit protects a lot but not completely and often we’ll have to treat and disinfect the skin for the next session,” he says. “Big impacts can result in muscular or skeletal issues or even fractures.” Dromi says an athlete’s drive – perhaps from a lifetime’s quest to reach the highest level – cannot be underestimated. “A fracture for normal people can take 4-5 weeks to manage but riders move to the next phase after a few days.”

Concussion cases can be more complicated. “It’s something that affects the ‘person’, not just the rider. A brain injury needs to be checked and under control for 24 hours. In the end, a muscle or bone injury is quite manageable compared to a big issue like this.”

Dromi sees the spectrum of demand on a grand prix rider’s body and mind. He’ll work with a 19-year-old like Moto3 starlet Jose Antonio Rueda and then with 30-year-old veteran Maverick Viñales.

“The mental side can be a game changer for a rider, especially if they are not so young,” he opines. “For this competition, they really have to take care of themselves, and that involves a lot of training away from the track. They like endurance cycling sessions to be ready for the endurance of the race. When they are young maybe they are not 100% in control of their lifestyle, or their training programme is not so precise and they don’t follow the guidelines. They do have the benefit of youth, and their recovery tends to be faster because their metabolism is faster. In your ’30s diet, training and better care are tools for prevention for elite athletes.”

The MotoGP physio is one of the few people in a paddock who gets to spend quiet, direct 1-1 time with a rider. Dromi says that some like to chat, others don’t. He is compliant and discreet. “The physio table for us is like the sofa for the psychologist,” he smiles. “We talk and they explain their problems but then sometimes there are also riders who do not want to talk. We don’t push at all. It is not my speciality but as a physio, in general, we do a lot of listening and hear a lot of stories.

“With the mental coach from APC, we try to help as many riders as possible in our roster and we are seeing some positive results. As an example, some could be better with their scheduling and organisation for a race for optimum performance. The mental coach helps with that preparation, such as neuro stimulation sessions before they go out to activate the neuromuscular system: the connection between the brain, the eyes and the reaction. We use tennis balls, touch pads to create some readiness. It’s important to be active and proactive and open to this phase of your training. The mental side requires this.”