The power of Ai: Inside Ogura’s unshakeable MotoGP mindset

The man who last weekend beat outpaced Marc Márquez, outraced Jorge Martin, and left Raul Fernández in his wheeltracks to become the first Japanese MotoGP winner for 22 years may owe it all to his very first rival.

In fact, Ai Ogura credits his first concept of competition to his long-term foe: Karen, his older sister of two years, who raced with her brother from a young age. “She was faster than me, so she pushed me. I think if she didn’t race, then I would not be like I am today,” says Ogura, before quickly adding “we are completely different characters” as if the rivalry is still active.

Ai rarely talks in such detail about his background but in an exclusive interview with Motor Sport, just 72 hours before his momentous Dutch Grand Prix win, the Superfile Trackhouse rider pours out his tale of persistence, resilience and sometimes tough love (“sometimes my father kicked me!”) that carried him from a Tokyo suburb to the heart of this year’s MotoGP title battle.

His background forged an unusually serious, quiet and humble member of the MotoGP grid; attributes that complement his smooth, balletic blur of ability on the Aprilia; a motorcycle that he cranks to an impossible angle (“when you follow Ai, it’s strange because it seems he’s crashing every corner…he’s really down but the bike is straight. I feel like I struggle to follow because I feel he’s crashing…but then he just turns and goes,” said 2024 world champion and brandmate Jorge Martin after last Sunday’s grand prix). He doesn’t so much ride through corners as slice them open with utter devotion to the front-end stability of the RS-GP. To watch Ogura at pace is a vision of precision and efficiency, of machination.

“The most important thing my parents did was to give me nothing”

Ai came within half a second of defeating Márquez in the Czech Republic two weeks ago which, he later admitted, was the first moment that he realised that he could finally

and carried the momentum to the TT Circuit Assen. Following his victory, he admitted that he had only realised that he could finally triumph in MotoGP, a season and a half into his tenure and with just 28 MotoGP starts to his name. He carried that momentum to Assen with success arriving after another runner-up finish in the Sprint on Saturday, his first front row start and a simmering sequence of results in 2026 that include eight top-fives from ten events and one blameless DNF.

He defied a sticking rear ride height device that turned his Aprilia into a stubborn, sparky low-rider for a lap. Jabbing the front brake to release the system, he then diced a two second deficit to his team-mate Raul Fernandez and Martin to reach the chequered flag through the hot Dutch air and planted a host of milestones at the hallowed facility. The seventh Japanese winner in premier class history, the first non-European since 2022 and only the second non-Spaniard/Italian victor in the last 75 Grands Prix (France’s Johann Zarco being the other, with one win in 2023 and 2025). Ogura has Moto3 podiums and Moto2 spoils on his CV but he is now in the big-time and sits fourth, just 25 points from the top of the championship thanks to a methodical and uncompromising approach to his profession.

In contrast to some of his Andorra-dwelling, Instagram-savvy, private-jetting peers, Ai still lives with his parents in Kiyose, a neighbourhood northwest of Tokyo and commutes to grands prix. He wanders around the paddock freely, without an entourage and resides in hotels at races for back-to-back events. Ogura used to be based in the small seaside town of Castelldefels, close to Barcelona airport, but after six years in Spain as part of the Honda Asia project he headed back.

“It never felt like home,” he reasons “and the flying does not bother me. I have all my training bikes at home, and I can train better there. The level of the riders that you spend time with on a track day is not high, like it is in Spain, but it’s OK. I just had one motocross bike [in Spain] and many times I wanted to go to a circuit…but it was closed. I couldn’t prepare like I wanted.”

As talk strays from the racetrack to stories of his upbringing, it’s evident that the conversation has gone beyond the familiar paddock interviews that Ai conducts in fluent English. When it comes to the vocabulary for his character-building foundations, he falters, drops his head and finally smiles gently: “I know exactly what I want to say in Japanese…but I can’t find it in English.”

The family residence is modest. “It’s a normal house,” he shrugs. “One time, MotoGP asked to film something there…but I said ‘no’ because it’s not something to show. Yes, it’s private, but I don’t care about that…it’s just that it’s not what people might think! It’s not huge, or something to show to the racing fans.’

Ogura’s father is a truck driver, who used to race as an amateur, and his mother works in a local hospital. Ai went through the traditional Japanese route of pocketbike and minibike series with his sister Karen. “Around pocketbike time she was important because she always went quicker and fought for the victory when I was back in P5-P6. She was always ahead…and I think it was important for me to have that person in the family. When I moved up to minibikes I was better. It is probably also the last time I raced with her because then we split classes.”

Ai then had his father’s influence. His description of these formative years sounds a little like tough love, but Ogura clearly appreciates the values he was given. “When I was really small, pocketbike time, sometimes he kicked me!” he says. “When I moved to minibike then he changed completely. He would say nothing to me. Sometimes [at tracks] I would ask ‘what should I do?’ and he’d say: ‘think for yourself’. It was interesting. He thought it was better for me. To train my brain and be more independent.”

How old was he? “Seven or eight [pauses]. It was part of his strategy. If you always have a teacher saying to you ‘do this, this and that’ then maybe in the next race you do very well but not ten races later. You have to think for yourself, especially if you get to [the level of] GPs then you have to be aware. My father explained this to me only four-five years ago and it was impressive to think he already believed it was the way to go when I was so young.”

The Ogura family competed with what they had until Ai was accepted to the MotoGP’s Asia Talent Cup scheme and he became the first rider to make it all the way up the ladder. Even now his presence in MotoGP imagery comes with an ATC plug. He is the finest exponent of how the platform can find and mould sporting promise, regardless of the social background. “The most important thing that my parents gave me was to give me nothing,” he tries to explain. “They kept me ‘hungry’ all the time. I don’t want to say this to sound a certain way…but I never had a new bike, I never had new suits or a new helmet. And that kind of thing makes you a bit stronger, a bit hungry. I feel they gave me that. I’d always raced with my family, even if it was difficult for money. I never joined a [racing] school or a team. My first proper team was when I went to JuniorGP!”.

The ATC selection made racing “become very serious” because “it wasn’t just about me anymore”. He came close but didn’t win the fledgling series and then attempted Europe at age 15, foregoing any semi-normal adolescence. “The only thing I was serious about was motorcycle racing,” he says. “By middle school I was OK with [missing out on friends’ activities] because I would always think: ‘if was them then I’d be jealous’. I said: ‘I am super-lucky…’. I never thought ‘I want to be a normal student guy’ or whatever.”

Ogura’s low profile and seriousness mirror the uncluttered mentality to his sport. It’s a clue to why he is so good. “I can think simple. It’s easy for me,” he claims. “The race is a place to show what you have got and what you can do. If you finish P10 then you are a rider that finished in 10th position. That’s it. I’m ready to accept this and I will be OK. If you are not happy with P10 then you need to work harder. That’s all. I was never [banging the table] after a race. Frustration? No. Because if the guy in P9 went one second faster then you need to go 1.1 faster. That’s all. Of course, I then think ‘how…?’”

“He’s a really hard worker and is always studying what he is doing,” crew chief Giovanni Mattarollo told the Paddock Pass Podcast earlier this year. “He is focused mostly on himself. He never puts any doubt on the bike and, if he is struggling, his first question is ‘what am I doing wrong?’

“He’s metronomic. He always puts the wheels in the same place, always trying to repeat the same manoeuvre to be consistent. I love to watch how he rides because he’s super-clean. He makes it look super-easy which means he’s going very fast. With Ai, if the bike moves then he understands the limits. We can see the bike is moving on the data but you don’t see it on the camera because it means he’s able to make a step over. In Qatar last year he gave me one of my best lessons in MotoGP; with the same straight face, he said: ‘emotions just make you slower’.”

Ogura’s tendency to tread his own path was seen most prolifically in his break from the relatively secure confines of the Honda Asia project in Moto2 and Moto3 in 2023. He won the title with the Spanish MT Helmets MSi crew in 2024 and then spurned the chance to rejoin the HRC collective and ride Honda’s still undercooked RCV in 2025 for a berth in MotoGP’s newest team, the only American outfit, with a satellite Aprilia.

Judging by Honda’s seven-season loyalty to Taka Nakagami, without a podium result to show for the investment, Ogura could have been comfortably set in the LCR-based saddle. Instead, the space usually reserved for Asian racers (but now inhabited by Brazil’s Diogo Moreira) went to Ai’s good friend and former housemate Somkiat Chantra, another Moto2 GP winner. The Thai then had a miserable rookie year punctuated by injury and had to find employment for 2026 in WorldSBK.

At the time Trackhouse’s decision to sign Ogura was greeted with some derision. The Japanese clearly had potential but was hardly prolific, and his personality was at odds with the marketing ‘machine’ that Trackhouse were expected to bring to MotoGP. 2025 was decent enough but two injuries disrupted a campaign that delivered seven top tens.

As a consequence, the fame and the attention of MotoGP is still alien to some degree, as well as the constant veil of pressure to perform. “Absolutely not!” he says when we ask if he’s used to it by now, given that he started 2026 as one of the main protagonists, taking podiums in France and Czech Republic. How does he tackle that side of the job then? “With time, with experience. Even now sometimes I am not handling it very well…but I am doing better than in the past.”

What happened in the past? “The Asia Talent Cup time was worst,” he recalls. “Every time before the race I was like ‘this if f**king important, this if f**king important, this if f**king important…’ and it made me anxious. But now it’s quite OK.”

Ai is reluctant to part of his MotoGP life. He’s ‘old school’ in this sense. Barely a hint of swagger emanates from his very slight frame. “I never thought: ‘I’m very good…’”, he admits. “Wait! Yes, probably when I won the championship because that says you are number one and nobody can say anything [otherwise].

“Now if you win a race then there are 22 of them. You might win 3…from 22. Hmm. But the championship? Yes. It [the feeling of the title] stays here for ever [touches chest]. Again, I don’t really want to say this because people might go ‘blah, blah’ but when I won the Moto2 title I knew – at that time, in that year – I was number one in the world. This makes me…calm. It makes me OK. It gives me the feeling that I did something. That’s everything to me. Of course, I am fighting for something important again in MotoGP but if something [bad] happened tomorrow…then I would be…OK.”