In sports, timing is everything. And for MotoGP, 2027 is a huge season. It’s the most radical regulation change the sport has seen since we first switched to prototypes in 2007. We’re going from 1,000cc’s to 850, while losing the ride-height devices that have plagued the last half decade. We’re switching from Michelin to Pirelli as a tyre supplier, and even with the reduction of 20-40% of the current bikes downforce – We suspect the next gen of bikes might only be a second or so a lap slower than what we have now.
But beyond that, it feels like a changing of the guard for the riders actually on the grid too. Since the start of the pandemic, MotoGP has felt more open than it’s ever been. With Marc Marquez far from his best until his seventh title last season, we’ve had new faces win titles (Mir, Quartararo, Bagnaia and Martin), but we’ve also had a healthy middle class who could mix it up with the best in the sport, and on a good day with everything in their favour, could even win races.
But it feels like we’re at a crossroads as 2026 rumbles on. We roughly know what the 2027 grid looks like (More here if you want to read on it), that middle class feels like it’s fading in terms of quality, and it’s time for a refresh. And it feels like a refresh because we haven’t had a huge rookie rush for a little while. We were churning through names at a pace until 2023, when all of a sudden, the well dried up as some quality riders stuck around. Here’s the breakdown of the new talent since the turn of the decade:
2020 – 3 (Brad Binder, Alex Marquez, Iker Lecuona)
2021 – 4 (Enea Bastianini, Jorge Martin, Luca Marini, Lorenzo Savadori)
2022 – 5 (Darryn Binder, Raul Fernandez, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Marco Bezzecchi, Remy Gardner)
2023 – 1 (Augusto Fernandez)
2024 – 1 (Pedro Acosta)
2025 – 3 (Fermin Aldeguer, Ai Ogura, Somkiat Chantra)
2026 – 2 (Diogo Moreira, Toprak Razgatlıoğlu)
2027 – 5 (We think…)
Those in red didn’t see a second contract. A couple of others there dodged a bullet. Savadori and Augusto Fernandez have become test riders since in purple. Nine have won at least one MotoGP race, six of those are multiple race winners. And of course, Jorge Martin has won a World Championship.
So, just who do we think is leaving MotoGP and looking for new work? Let’s breakdown the departing class of 2026.
Maverick Vinales
Notables: 2013 Moto3 Champion, 26 wins (10 at MotoGP level), only rider in MotoGP era (2001-) to win with three different manufacturers
Once upon a time, Maverick really did feel like a world beater. I still remember in just his fourth ever GP race in the 125cc class (One of only three men in the field to have done so), squaring up to future Champion Nico Terol at Le Mans. He was just 16 back then, and potentially the future of the sport. It was going to be a matter of when, rather than if he’d make it to the top flight.
By the time he did get there in 2015, it looked like he could be the chief Marquez rival after two years of shock and awe at the sport’s new alien. A thorn in MarcVDS’s side in Moto2. Won in his second MotoGP season with Suzuki, then three of his first five with Yamaha’s factory team after Jorge Lorenzo bolted to Ducati.
But it’s impossible to talk about Maverick’s career without talking about his off-track transgressions. There’s no getting around it, his stubbornness has burned bridges at nearly every major team he’s ridden with. He quit Avintia in Moto3 because he felt he wasn’t being given the chance to win and had to be talked into riding before jumping to Calvo in his title winning year. His frustration at not winning at Yamaha like Fabio Quartararo was led to riding at the back of the field in Germany before intentionally redlining his Yamaha engine in Austria trying to force a blowout, leading to his immediate sacking.
He went to Aprilia, made history as part of their rise to prominence, becoming the first rider of the modern era to win with a third different manufacturer in Austin, but just one round later, vented his spleen at the team not being to replicate said performance, and then chose to quit what would have been a comfortable seat in a future Championship team.
He went to KTM via Tech3, and it started again with such promise. Second on the road in Qatar cruelly taken away via the tyre pressure rule, was matching Pedro Acosta for pace. But the broken shoulder injury he took this time last year at the Sachsenring was seemingly the beginning of the end. He’s never looked like the same rider since, and needed a second surgery to remove damaged screws from his plate after crashing in pre-season testing.
Germany this past weekend was sad. He finally admitted he doesn’t know where he’s at with his recovery, after riding around in dead last all weekend, and fresh off the back of losing patience with KTM and their classic rider management tactics. He was lowballed earlier in the season in terms of money, and was then critical of the brand’s negotiation tactics, losing patience and throwing them under the bus when he still had a chance of being retained.
Maverick’s admitted he’s burned out on MotoGP, and I don’t know what he does next, whether it be World Superbikes, or just a year out of racing in general. He’s still only 31 and yet his next MotoGP start will be his 200th. If this is the end, he’s had a genuinely outstanding career but one that could have so easily been so much more.
Alex Rins
Notables: Moto2 and Moto3 Championship Runner-Up (2013, 2015), 3rd in 2020 MotoGP Championship, 18 wins (6 at MotoGP level)
Alex Rins will be one of GP racing’s great “nearly” men. Raised in the fire of the most loaded Moto3 class for a good decade, alongside the aforementioned Maverick Vinales, Alex Marquez, Jonas Folger and the late Luis Salom. Moto2 was the same story, elite, but in the midst of Johann Zarco having the greatest two-year run in intermediate class history.
Rins joined Suzuki at the peak of their powers and there was an amazing three-year stretch where he was a Top 5 rider in the sport. Able to make his Suzuki turn on a six-pence and a consistent point-scorer. And on his day, a truly exceptional racer. His famous final corner win over Marc Marquez at the 2019 British GP was iconic and I’ve still never seen Marquez angrier in terms of losing a race.
Suzuki’s sudden departure in 2022 was the catalyst for RIns decline. It wasn’t directly that, he won his third race on a Honda at the Circuit of the Americas, but one of the most sickening crashes ever ended his time at the top after Mugello. It shattered his leg in a crash so horrifying, it’s never been shown or repeated by Dorna since. He still walks with a limp, three years on.
The timing of said crash meant only Yamaha gave him a chance off the back of Honda’s decline as a brand, and he’s played an extreme second fiddle to Fabio Quartararo since, often between two-five tenths of a second behind. He’s been given every chance to figure things out and this is just who he is as a rider now, and that’s saddening. Let’s be frank, crashing was ultimately his fault, but you never think it’ll be a career-altering one, until it happens. I think Rins will make for a fine test rider somewhere, as I fear the queue to get on the World Superbike roster is going to be long, especially with a fight likely for Nicolo Bulega’s departing seat.
Jack Miller
Notables: 2014 Moto3 Championship runner-up, 10 wins (4 at MotoGP level), 4th in 2021 World Championship
Jack Miller, your favourite rider’s favourite rider. He’s the definition of a grinder, a man whose parents gave up everything, bought an RV and moved to Europe as a teenager, finding whatever trackdays they could find hoping the right people noticed. His Championship challenging year in Moto3 with Red Bull KTM was the first time he wasn’t paying for his ride.
He narrowly lost out to Alex Marquez that season, but got offered the unicorn of all unicorns, a double class jump to MotoGP on a production-based Honda with LCR. It was a baptism of fire, and it really took Miller a good three seasons to find his footing, but he got once he figured it out, he could go.
I’ll never forget his historic win at Assen in 2016. 1,000-1 going into the weekend to win, but heavy rain, brilliant bike management and bravery to take Marquez on and win, MarcVDS’s one and only MotoGP victory, and the first from an independent team in nearly 10 years.
That got him a job with Pramac, and by his second season there, he was regularly in the Top 5 and fighting for podiums. That got him a promotion into the factory team. He’d peak here, never being a title contender and fighting around the Top 5 area, but he did take three more emotional wins – Back-to-back at Jerez and in the rain of Le Mans, and then a dominant victory in Japan in 2022, his best on two wheels.
Miller’s departure’s been coming for a little while, you could argue that 2025 should have been his last, but he got a longer tenure than most because of his reputation. An experienced veteran with a bucketload of experience with four different manufacturers (Ducati, Honda, KTM and now Yamaha), who’s worked very hard to be a great developer for bikes and teams, as well as being a joy to work with, always doing the hard work, never complaining and everyone loving him. To me, that’s even more important than the accolades.
I think he’d be a great poach for World Superbikes given his Ducati experience, and given he’s still a young dad, the reduced workload (12 weekends a year as opposed to 22), could do him the world of good. And I think he’d be an immediate contender, a modern-day Troy Bayliss. I know he’s been offered it before – Who says no?
Franco Morbidelli
Notables: 2017 Moto2 Champion, 2020 MotoGP Championship Runner-Up, 11 wins (3 at MotoGP level)
This one hurts. It’s worth pointing out that off the bike, Franco is one of the genuinely great people in bike racing, one of the very few, if not only major voice who championed the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and addressed the startling lack of black voices in the paddock and on the track.
Franco was a European Superstock 600 Champion who took the big leap over to Moto2. Like many who came before him, he had to fight the grind that is Moto2, but once he figured it out, the wins came rapidly. His 2017 Moto2 is one of the series greatest – Eight wins, six pole positions, 12 podium finishes and north of 300 points.
In just his third MotoGP season, in a RNF Yamaha independent team that had the headlines move more towards Fabio Quartararo as the generational prodigy, it was Morbidelli that finished strong in a chaotic pandemic season with two wins and a third place, to end up as runner-up and just 13 points off Joan Mir’s title.
Morbidelli peaked right here. It wasn’t until the following season that we found out Morbidelli had been dealing with a long-term ACL injury which he injured further in a training accident before Le Mans. He didn’t get it operated on until after the Assen TT, and even with a promotion to the factory team off the back of Maverick’s transgressions, he never looked like the title contender he was back in the pandemic.
A year at Pramac in 2023 was also marred by a huge accident in pre-season, where he had a concussion so severe he forgot his own name in the hospital as he was recovering. Franky had to deal with injury setbacks, previous-spec machinery and a bad reputation of blocking riders during qualifying sessions that had soured some of the goodwill he’d built up, including a smack to the helmet thanks to Aleix Espargaro.
This season has really felt like the one where the wheels have fallen off as teammate Fabio di Giannantonio challenges for the title, as well as Alex Marquez the year before. I think he’s another guy who could compete for the World Superbike title, but at 32 in December, how much of his prime does he have left?
It’s only fair we also breakdown the new talent we think is heading into the big leagues in 2027:
David Alonso (Honda?) – Arguably the most exciting talent on this list. David Alonso is arguably the greatest Moto3 rider of all-time. 18 wins in two seasons in the class, 14 of them in 2024, something no rider in any class has ever done. His ability has been hampered by the nature of Moto2 being a competitive incinerator, but he has two wins in the class and is an outside bet for the 2026 title. His race-winning pass at Assen back in May was one of the greatest in series history. The only sketchy thing about Alonso’s future now is whether he rides for the factory team or satellite LCR package given how impressive Diogo Moreira’s rookie season has been in said seat. Apparently, we’ll know during the flyaways.
Izan Guevara (Pramac) – The first graduate of the new Yamaha Moto2 development team. It feels like yesterday that Guevara was the 2022 Moto3 Champion with a seven-win season, including a Grand Slam sweep of all the Spanish races. Early injury plagued him in Moto2, but he’s taken big leaps year-on-year, from 22nd to 17th to 11th, to now second in the series, with his first win in the class last season at Valencia. If he was on Kalex, I think he’d be leading the Championship right now. Still, he’ll be on a Pramac Yamaha alongside Toprak in 2027.
Dani Holgado (Gresini) – I’ve mentioned it before, but the class of 2024 in Moto3 was something else. David Alonso and Dani Holgado at Aspar will both be moving up, Ivan Ortola is a fringe contender and will be heavy favourite for 2027, and Collin Veijer’s… working on it. But Holgado is a very capable Moto2 rider with three wins. Maybe not quite as spectacular as his teammate, but a high floor guy with good speed and still only 21.
Senna Agius (Tech3) – Senna is a European Moto2 rider, who’s moved into the World Championship and grown into a top contender. He won an epic at the British GP as well as his home race in 2025, and took back-to-back wins in Austin and Jerez while sitting third in the 26’ title fight. He seemingly won the war with teammate Manuel Gonzalez for a top seat. To be honest, I don’t like the reasoning why, but Senna’s Australian passport is a huge boon for the series and outside promotion, especially with a new street race they wanna promote in Adelaide for next year and Miller almost certainly won’t be on the grid for it.
Nicolo Bulega (VR46) – You wait a stupidly long time for a World Superbike move to MotoGP and then all of a sudden, you get two in two years. Genuinely delighted that the VR46 team has put its money where its mouth is, he’s earned a shot. He was in the points in the two cameo appearances he made replacing Marc Marquez when he was hurt at the end of 2025, and in that time he amassed a 25-race winning streak that only ended at Donington last week. Toprak’s record was 13. Yes, Ducati are now even more lopsided as a manufacturer, but that level of execution is incredible regardless. He’ll also be bringing in knowledge of the Pirelli tyres moving into the series for 2027 too, priceless insight. Going to be very interesting to see where he falls in.
What do you all make of the changing of the guard in MotoGP? Reach out on socials and let me know.
