The battle for the 2024 MotoGP grid

And yet everyone in the paddock is going racing, just like the riders on the grid and the mechanics in the garages, except they’re not opening throttles, squeezing brakes and spinning spanners, they’re wheeling and dealing and signing, sealing and delivering, hopefully.

The battle for the 2024 MotoGP grid is one such moment where these discussions — which sometimes become arguments — may have an important effect on next year’s racing, so they shouldn’t be ignored.

So let me begin…

There are two big issues at stake here.

Pierer Mobility AG (that’s KTM, GASGAS and Husqvarna) currently has two teams and four bikes on the grid but wants to run an extra team next year, because racing’s most famous beverage/motorcycle entity – Red Bull KTM – has such a bulging portfolio of riding talent that it doesn’t have enough room for it all.

Right now Pierer Mobility has five riders contracted to contest the 2024 MotoGP championship: Brad Binder, Jack Miller, Pol Espargaró, Augusto Fernandez and current Moto2 leader Pedro Acosta. That’s one more rider than bikes, which means that KTM is going to have to break one of its riders’ contracts, unless it can create another team.

MotoGP currently has 22 bikes on the grid, following Suzuki’s exit at the end of last year. That’s two fewer bikes than the maximum of 24 specified by rights-holder Dorna. The company imposes this limit because Dorna offers significant financial support to all independent teams (that’s six teams of 11) and also offers financial incentives to the factories that supply them with bikes. Thus each indie team costs Dorna six to seven million Euros per year.

HRC has already said that it will let Márquez break his current four-year contract

Dorna introduced this system of massive financial support for the lower half of the grid half a decade ago. For some reason motorcycle racing never attracts the financial support it deserves, so MotoGP’s right-owners had to dig deep to ensure the entire grid has enough budget to be competitive. It’s one of the best things Dorna has ever done.

This is why Dorna can’t keep expanding the grid, because it doesn’t have the money. Plus Dorna is happy with 22 bikes. I agree, 22 is enough. After all, who really cares who finishes 21st or 22nd, let alone 23rd or 24th?

But why can’t KTM have those two vacant slots on the grid, if it wants them? Because the vacant slots are reserved for a factory team, because they belonged to Suzuki, not an indie team. Dorna wants to leave the slots open, just in case another factory wants to join the championship.

I see Dorna’s point, but I cannot see another factory coming into MotoGP any time soon, especially because it would take its engineers many, many years to catch up in the aerodynamics race.

One of the main reasons Dorna introduced the control ECU in 2016 was for this same reason – to encourage new manufacturers into GP, because they wouldn’t need to spend many, many years catching up their rivals in the rider-control electronics race.

“Without the control ECU, KTM may have said no to MotoGP,” KTM test rider Alex Hofmann told me in 2016.

Obviously, control aero will never happen, because all the bikes would look the same, so why would any big brand come into MotoGP knowing it would most likely struggle to be competitive for a long, long time?

So, that’s one point.

Next is the situation revolving around the most successful rider on the grid: Marc Márquez.

What MotoGP needs more than anything right now is its two most talented riders (arguably) – Márquez and Fabio Quartararo – on competitive machinery, roughing things up at the front of the pack.

Márquez has been with Red Bull for years and KTM is keen to have him on an RC16, so an extra team would solve the factory’s logjam of riders and save it from breaking a rider’s contract. Hypothetically, Márquez and Acosta would be team-mates, perhaps on bikes branded Husqvarna, because Pierer already has Moto2 and Moto3 teams bearing the name of the Swedish-born manufacturer.

HRC has already said that it will let Márquez break his current four-year contract (which concludes at the end of next year) if he so desires. “Honda is not a company that wants to have people that are not happy being at Honda,” said Repsol Honda team manager Alberto Puig at Assen.

So why wouldn’t Dorna quietly forget about its factory-slot rule and give KTM the blessing to create a new team, which would get MotoGP’s biggest box-office draw back in the limelight?

That would surely compensate Dorna’s investment in another indie team, wouldn’t it? Márquez the Merciless battling for victory again, fans turning on the TVs to see what might happen next. You’ve got to speculate to accumulate.

The reason it might not happen is because there are other things going on, as always.

Dorna is very worried that Honda (and/or Yamaha), which are both experiencing the grimmest times in their racing histories, might turn away from the championship they’ve dominated together since the 1980s.

No doubt Honda would hate losing Márquez, its only MotoGP title winner since Casey Stoner, which Dorna obviously fear might push Honda towards giving up, despite HRC president Koji Watanabe’s recent assurance that Honda “will never quit” MotoGP.

Obviously denying KTM another team is the best way to keep Márquez at Honda, for next year at least, and therefore soothe the nerves of Dorna executives and Honda engineers.

If Márquez is disappointed with next year’s bike, could he cope with the thought of plodding through 2024?

But it doesn’t stop there – here comes some more table thumping.

Dorna wants to give Honda and Yamaha extra concessions to accelerate their return to the front of MotoGP, but I’ve heard that if KTM doesn’t get its extra team it will vote against the introduction of those concessions in the MSMA. And all rule changes must be agreed unanimously by the MSMA’s five manufacturers, so if KTM doesn’t get what it wants, neither will Dorna.

This is how deals are done: you give me a bit of what I want and I’ll give you a bit of what you want.

Whatever happens, Márquez’s future is still the big talking point, so put the date of Monday, September 11 in your diary.

That is the day Honda will give the 30-year-old his first ride on its prototype 2024 MotoGP bike. In recent years Márquez has usually been somewhat disappointed in technical updates to the RC213V – while Honda (and Yamaha) take small steps forward in this new era of MotoGP, its European rivals (Aprilia, Ducati and KTM) take giant leaps.

This year’s results perfectly highlight how MotoGP’s status quo has been totally upended. Japanese factories had dominated MotoGP since the mid-seventies, but so far this year eight of ten races featured no Japanese motorcycles in the top five. And at two races the top ten was all-European, the first time that’s happened since 1969, 54 years ago. At Silverstone the first Japanese machine to take the chequered flag was in 14th place!

Honda’s new MotoGP bike needs to show some new thinking and be significantly better, because the current machine lacks somewhat in every area: engine, chassis, electronics and downforce aerodynamics. And if Márquez completes that Misano test disappointed, will he be able to cope with the thought of plodding through 2024, watching the clock as his contract ticks down to its conclusion?

And if he does want to get out but there’s no room at KTM, would he have any other alternative?

All the factory teams are full, but if I was Aprilia I’d be thinking hard about trying to squeeze him in somewhere. Only recently Aleix Espargaró said there’d always be room for a rider of Márquez’s talent within the Noale factory, which undoubtedly needs a super-talent to take full advantage of the RS-GP, which in many areas is as good as the Ducati and KTM.

So, maybe Aprilia management should grow some piranha teeth.  With all due respect to Maverick Viñales and Raúl Fernández, they are not getting the results they should be getting on the RS-GP.

It’s almost two years since Viñales joined Aprilia. He’s ridden 36 races with the factory and scored just two podiums: second at Silverstone last year and second in this year’s season-opening Portuguese GP. The 28-year-old has been a factory rider for nine-and-a-half seasons and during that time he has scored nine victories. He is a superb motorcycle rider – a joy to watch when he’s in the groove – but he’s not a great motorcycle racer, usually going backwards when the lights go out.

Fernández was a revelation in the smaller classes. When he finished second overall in his rookie Moto2 season in 2021, Kalex engineers told me he was the most naturally gifted rider they’d ever worked with. But he’s lost the ability to put that talent to the ground.

So, if I was Aprilia’s sporting director Massimo Rivola I’d buy Fernández out of his contract and do the same with Viñales, by moving him to the RNF squad, alongside the luckless Miguel Oliveira. Then I’d put Márquez in the factory garage. But that’s just me thinking aloud.

Whatever happens MotoGP desperately needs Márquez on a winning bike, whether it’s a Honda, KTM or Aprilia, and it’s up to the paddock’s cleverest people – its engineers, managers and movers and shakers – to make that happen.