So what has changed? Management, obviously, but since Schramm’s statement the difference between WSB and MotoGP has become more than marginal.

In 2019 WSB raced in Europe, the USA, South America, Qatar and Thailand. Now the series numbers only twelve rounds, all in Europe, apart from the season-opening Australian event. Meanwhile MotoGP has grown from 19 to 21 rounds, 12 in Europe, nine outside.

Last year’s spectator numbers mirror those figures: the 2023 WSB season attracted 593,000 trackside fans, against 2.9 million in MotoGP.

Those trackside figures make MotoGP five times bigger than WSB. These numbers are, of course, a factor of Dorna growing MotoGP and shrinking WSB to make MotoGP motorcycling’s undisputed premier class, like Formula 1 in car racing.

This presumably is Dorna’s vision – that the manufacturers spend their money on MotoGP, while WSB becomes a low-cost series supported mostly by importer- and privateer-backed teams.

Dorna’s sale to Liberty Media will most likely continue this trend, because WSB wasn’t mentioned once during a 55-minute media conference following Liberty’s acquisition of Dorna earlier this month. Will Liberty sell WSB? Highly unlikely, because why give a rival a way into the sport?

Flasch backed up his comments to German magazine Motorrad with these words in the latest edition of Dutch magazine KicXstart, “We will evaluate very carefully whether other classes and formats indeed make sense for us”.

These statements suggest BMW is looking seriously at MotoGP, most likely from 2027, when new technical regulations are introduced – always the best time to enter a championship.

Dorna’s efforts to get BMW into MotoGP took a weird turn a couple of years ago. When Suzuki announced its withdrawal from the championship, Dorna wanted BMW to take Suzuki’s GSX-RR MotoGP bikes and race them with BMW badges. But Schramm was in charge then and why would a proud German manufacturer want to race Japanese motorcycles?

So far, the short-lived 2006 prototype is as close as BMW has come to entering MotoGP.

BMW subcontracted this project to Oral Engineering, an Italian company founded by Mauro Forghieri, a former Ferrari Formula 1 engineer. The MotoGP prototype was tested by former MotoGP riders Jeremy McWilliams and Luca Cadalora.

The 800cc triple (MotoGP engines were due to be limited to 800cc from 2007) was basically three cylinders off BMW’s 2.4-litre V8 Formula 1 car engine.

This in spite of the fact that Aprilia had raced the first three seasons of MotoGP with its 990cc Cube, which was essentially three cylinders off Cosworth’s three-litre V10 F1 engine. The Cube proved that using F1 engine tech in MotoGP is little more than a great way of making millionaires out of surgeons and osteopaths.

In other words, it’s still not a full-factory team. No factory MotoGP team operates like this – all five are fully under the control of the manufacturer.

Signing Toprak Razgatlıoğlu for WSB – which wouldn’t have been cheap in WSB terms – suggests that BMW might be taking racing more seriously, which might give credence to Flasch’s recent announcement.

No doubt, Dorna is courting Flasch like hell, involving BMW in MotoGP’s 2027 technical rules rewrite. BMW knows it will have a huge amount of catching up to do in MotoGP, so it will want to reduce the areas where it has little or no experience, which means downforce aero, ride-height devices and holeshot devices. (BMW won’t be the only company campaigning to get rid of this stuff.)

It’s no coincidence that KTM waited until the introduction of spec electronics software before it entered MotoGP, because the Austrian company knew it would take years to create anything like the tailor made, machine-learning software used by the championship’s existing factories.

That’s why KTM commenced its RC16 project in earnest just a few months after MotoGP announced the 2016 introduction of spec software in March 2014. And KTM’s successes in MotoGP prove that you can start from nowhere and beat everyone in a few years – if you run a great project like KTM’s, in which the generals speak to the foot soldiers and everyone works in the same direction.

By the way, the huge coverage KTM has enjoyed in recent years, thanks to its RC16 running at the front of MotoGP, may be one reason why BMW is considering MotoGP, because it doesn’t like another Germanic motorcycle brand getting all the headlines. Corporate egos play as big a part in racing as rider egos.

So, apart from keeping car engineers well away from its MotoGP project and learning from its mistakes in WSB, what else will BMW need to make a success in the premier class of bike racing?

First, it must decide its engine configuration: V4 or inline-four?

V4 engines rule MotoGP. They have taken six of the last eight riders’ titles and monopolised the constructors’ prize during that period. So far this season, V4 machines have locked out the podium in every sprint and GP race and currently fill the top eleven places in the championship.

So surely BMW will build a V4? Maybe, maybe not. When MotoGP switched from 990cc to 800cc in 2007, corner speed became more important, which helped the M1 win three riders’ titles and three constructors’ crowns during the five-year 800 era.

Thus it’s not that obvious which way BMW should go. However, if the company is serious about MotoGP, it should already be working towards running computer simulations of both configurations.

Second, BMW will need to spend big, which won’t be a problem, because the company is the world’s sixth-biggest car manufacturer – in terms of revenue – behind Ford and in front of Honda. And if the decision is made to chase MotoGP glory, the company will be happy to spend on MotoGP. Remember that Volkswagen subsidiary Audi helps Ducati’s MotoGP effort, even though the companies have different names and come from different countries.

What kind of money? If BMW wants to succeed it will have to spend around 100 million Euros (£85 million) a year to get the project off the ground. This will include buying the best engineers and technicians from rival MotoGP factories – engine designers, chassis designers, electronics experts, aerodynamicists, mechanics and so on.

This is how KTM caught up Ducati and this is what BMW must do to climb the MotoGP learning curve as quickly as quickly as possible. All this will mean some glorious pay days for MotoGP’s cleverest brains!

And riders? Razgatlıoğlu is 27-years-old, which will make him 30 at the start of the 2027 season. What more perfect situation could there be than BMW hiring two top MotoGP riders – one for racing, the other for testing – to ride with the Turk and develop its MotoGP bike. If Razgatlıoğlu stays healthy he should be an even better rider by 2027 and everyone knows that MotoGP already needs him on the grid.