What are MotoGP's satellite teams for? Trackhouse prepares for boom under Liberty Media

MotoGP is in stasis. This is not a reference to the race-winning pace of Alex Márquez at last Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix — nearly eight seconds faster than his 2025 pole benchmark — nor the processional nature of the contest on Sunday, but rather the power politics in the paddock.

As most people know, MotoGP will pivot to a fresh technical formula in 2027: slightly smaller engine sizes, fewer technical ‘devices’, less aerodynamic emphasis (designed to put more influence back into riders’ right hands), a new single tyre supplier.

This change comes after 14 years with 1000cc motors, a decade with Michelins and engineering evolution, where the bikes are aero shapes on wheels. There is confluence with the next five-year agreement cycle between the 5 manufacturers, 11 teams and promoter MotoGP Sport Entertainment Group, as well as the next two-year contract window for all but three of the riders from the 22 on the grid, starting in 2027.

Meetings for negotiations and deals may have outnumbered those for race set-up and strategy in the paddock during the four grands prix in 2026 to date. In Jerez last weekend, the negotiations between MotoGP SEG (representing Liberty Media’s interests and perspectives as well) and the MSMA appeared to be dragging on without much sign of a resolution.

The bones of contention are remuneration, profit share and commitments to marketing and promotion and the resources this demands. While Honda is a global motoring behemoth and Yamaha has its own sizeable footprint, Ducati, Aprilia and KTM are tied to more specific product sales and, arguably, their MotoGP participation must deliver more targeted objectives as justification for their involvement. They seek backing and assurances for bringing their R&D to the show, and are asking for some of the MotoGP pie that generated €462m (£400m) in revenue in 2024 through media rights, commercial deals, race promotion and other money spinners.

There is another layer of contracts to be signed and closed, involving the five brands and the six satellite teams. These unions are not only fundamental for the manufacturers for presence and promotion but also for data gathering. Currently, every firm has a minimum of four bikes in play. While little movement is expected in terms of the colours to be worn, it’s still a fascinating point of flex in the fabric of the championship.

It places the role and status of these teams into focus: are they antiquated, results-obsessed, threadbare operations in need of help, their efforts solely dependent on the long-term favour and benevolence of the manufacturer? Well-equipped, sustainable ‘companies’ with a franchise mentality and the view of racing as business? Or contrasting blends of these characteristics?

We’ve already explored the tilting landscape for grand prix teams through articles in the summer of 2025 as some began to feel the Liberty Media ‘effect’; namely closer scrutiny from outside investors and the first significant buyout with the Guenther Steiner-led Ikon Capital acquisition of Red Bull Tech3 KTM.

Trackhouse Racing is the newest paddock entrant, having gathered the ashes of the old RNF Aprilia team. The NASCAR protagonist assumed a large amount of RNF staff, the Aprilia association and some of the technical infrastructure at the end of 2023. The team won its first grand prix in 2025 with Raul Fernandez, and has shone with the Spaniard and blossoming Japanese Ai Ogura so far in 2026 as the RS-GP has matured into the most competitive motorcycle in the series for the last gasp of the 1000s.

“I think we are getting into a really nice place with the sporting side of the business; the Aprilias are really good, everybody that is working for Trackhouse is understanding how we like to run the team and how we can work together,” Trackhouse founder and CEO Justin Marks told Motor Sport in an exclusive interview at the US GP and on the same weekend where manufacturers’ CEOs were meeting with MotoGP SEG and Liberty.

“We’re hitting a good flow. The exercise now is to build the business side of the company and develop a clear understanding of what the three- and five-year plan is for MotoGP,” he adds. “We’re taking the long view on everything. We are taking our time and making sure that the decisions are well thought out and adhere to a strategy.

“The results have been great but we are looking for more consistency,” the former racing driver continues. “We really want to bring sponsors in that aren’t endemic to motorcycle sport; lifestyle brands, technology companies, just because there are so many fans, and it’s a great value in the motor sport industry.”

Trackhouse is already sharing some of its NASCAR business endeavours. In Jerez last Thursday, it announced a new significant backer, SuperFile, an advanced file-sharing security program. The company is based in Chicago and CEO and founder Shane Valdez backed Trackhouse with a custom livery for the Daytona 500 in February. The American has now extended that commercial interest to MotoGP.

“I believe the ‘taste makers’ of the world are sports teams, whether it’s soccer, NASCAR or something way-cooler like MotoGP,” says Valdez, speaking about his enthusiasm for the championship and a deal that saw the Trackhouse bikes run a special ‘stormy’ colourway in Spain.

Like in NASCAR, Trackhouse is not afraid to morph, and no other team changes its look quite as often. Its alliance with an internationally renowned brand like Gulf has led to more livery experimentation.

The satellite teams are a cosmopolitan mix of personnel but five of them have roots solely in Italy and France. Trackhouse is already unique as an American entity. It brings around 40 staff to each grand prix; a total that can slim for the flyaway events and increase for the European rounds.

Its presence on this continent is split between workshop and storage facilities in Italy (Aprilia’s HQ in Noale) and the Netherlands, but the bulk of the team’s structure is centred on the NASCAR business in North Carolina, where it has a roster of five employees focused on commercial relationships and another 15 for marketing, design and communications alone. It’s more than its peers.

Willingly or not, Trackhouse is at the vanguard of MotoGP’s growth mission in the USA but it’s a quest unlikely to blossom overnight, judging by the company’s work to pull in non-endemic partners.

“I see interest growing but it’s going slowly and it’s mainly on the back of the Liberty acquisition,” Marks says. “It will take some time. Once Liberty really starts to execute their strategy and their plan, I think it will really ramp up.

“We try to do the best that we can with the platform we have and with the NASCAR team to educate a big American fanbase about what MotoGP is and how exciting it is: we’ve certainly seen an uptick but we’re still having to do a lot of ‘education’ in the commercial market and when we are talking to companies to explain to them and show them. It’s a slow burn.”

Marks is positive that the ‘taste’ of MotoGP is all that’s needed for the boom to begin. “It just requires a bit more work on our side to show them the metrics because the optics and the visuals are unlike anything else in motor sports. And then getting them to the races: to see it, hear it, smell it, experience it.

“There are so many companies that are looking to differentiate their marketing message and their story that they are very open to learning what it’s all about. It’s just not in everybody’s consciousness yet, like it should be.”

The external battle is one thing, the internal positioning within MotoGP is another. How is Trackhouse poised in the paddock politics, particularly as MotoGP SEG applied a thick layer of grease to the wheels to help Trackhouse integrate quickly into the championship?

“We just went through this two years ago in NASCAR,” Marks recalls. “I think the exercise is in educating the sanctioning body and the rights-holders about how much more successful the sport can be if the teams are healthy and sustainable, and they aren’t so reliant on corporate sponsorships and having to come up with so much of the funding themselves.

“The more economic, financial and marketing support from the rights-holders for the teams means being able to work more collaboratively to grow the sport. Right now, we spend 99% of our ‘bandwidth’ just keeping the team going: sponsorship, competing.”

Figures aside, is Marks happy with what MotoGP SEG requires from the teams for the next five years? “Well, I am comfortable with it because I think the goal is the same for everybody. The ‘back-and-forth’ comes from how we get there, and the right use of money, time assets and infrastructure. The teams will always want more, in any sport. It has to get to a point where more financial contribution to the teams is a business incentive and benefits their [MotoGP SEG] business as well.”

In MotoGP, Trackhouse is independent, but as an American company, it embraces a corporate ethos that gives it tools and expertise beyond a time-honoured traditional racing set-up. It was also focused on an entertainment wing with former partner, hip-hop artist Pitbull. It wants to recruit fast riders but also different nationalities, and the livery alterations are a ploy to show flexibility and personality in the Instagram world.

The team and company are incredibly tight with Aprilia and count on the engineering resources of their principal technical collaborator, especially at races, but the riders are contracted by Trackhouse; this is not quite the same situation for other satellite units where the parent manufacturer has the main say or ‘placement’ rights.

Aprilia should continue as a partner for 2027-2031 even though Ogura will depart for the Yamaha factory team and Fernandez’s future is TBC.