There was always going to be teething issues when Liberty Media took over ownership of MotoGP. Dorna-run since 1992, existing fans have been used to a certain status quo that ultimately feels quite disrupted when new ideas are proposed.
Already, though, there have been some positive moves. While not directly linked to Liberty’s takeover, the buyout of the Tech3 squad by ex-Haas Formula 1 team boss Guenther Steiner has already provided mainstream attention to the series.
This was followed by reports that four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen was interested in team ownership in MotoGP, going alongside reports last year of a similar interest from seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
These are positive things, even if MotoGP should be wary of its satellite portion of the grid being reduced to playthings of rich F1 drivers.
But in the last week, reports have begun emerging of negatively impactful changes being considered by the championship. Chiefly, these revolve around Liberty’s desire for MotoGP to have a greater position of the spotlight while Moto2 and Moto3 have their visibility minimised.
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From next year, Moto2 and Moto3 is set to be ousted from pitlane and kicked to a corner of the paddock in a move that apes how Formula 2 and Formula 3 exist in F1. Understandably, this has raised concerns among those teams who have already found sponsor retention and funding harder to come by of late.
But it seems the ill treatment of Moto2 and Moto3 is set to go further. Spain’s motorsport.com reported this week that from the Japanese Grand Prix, broadcasters are being advised to ignore Marc Marquez’s 2010 125cc world championship and 2012 Moto2 crown and refer to him simply as a seven-time MotoGP champion should he secure the crown at Motegi.
Minimising the visibility of smaller categories which are now firmly designed as feeder series is one thing. But erasing history is an altogether more problematic prospect that has enraged fans over the last 24 hours.
Social media, of course, is not really the battleground on which to decide championship policies. But given the largely cautious response to Liberty’s takeover existing MotoGP fans have had, this will do nothing to win them over. That said, Liberty had to deal with similar when it took charge of F1 in 2016 and it will feel vindicated by what it has achieved since.
Why history matters in MotoGP
But history is something Liberty Media has had a bit of trouble with in its time running F1. Its big 75th anniversary birthday bash at the British Grand Prix came and went without much in the way of fanfare. Counter that with what MotoGP did at Silverstone in 2024 for its 70th anniversary and you begin to understand my point.
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F1 will happily dip in and out of historic moments when it suits, though seemingly only ever for the greatest hits: Senna and Schumacher mainly. Beyond that, Liberty often seems out of touch with what came before.
In previous jobs, I’ve had discussions before with F1 journalist colleagues who have always moved to dismiss Moto2/Moto3 titles as legitimate. F1’s feeder ladder is very much that: F2 and F3, and GP2 and GP3 before, even through Formula Renault 3.5 and F3000, never were designated as world championships. That’s fine.
But that was never the case for grand prix motorcycle racing from day one. The world championship was always designed around multiple classes of machinery, because – for the most part – motorcycle racing has always had an eye on the consumer. Nobody just rode 500cc bikes – they rode 125s, 250s, 50cc, 80cc, etc.
Even as the world championship developed over the years to what we have now where Moto3 and Moto2 clearly serve as stepping stones to MotoGP, those smaller classes race at every grand prix. These are competitions for the best of the best (for the most part) in that specific division. Designating them as world championships is absolutely legitimate.
It’s something that has given MotoGP a unique identity compared to F1 and other motorsport series around the world, even if Dorna has done a bit of erasing of its own over the years when it comes to Sidecars, Formula 750 and MotoGP’s Isle of Man TT heritage.
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Truthfully, though, MotoGP is about the only championship (at least for now) that understands it is a series within the wider sport of motorsport – not the sport itself. That is very much reflected in how Moto2 and Moto3 are designated.
Unlike F2 and F3, which have always been spec series, MotoGP’s lower categories have been open to manufacturer involvement. Moto3 currently has Honda and KTM building bikes, though there is a move being devised for this to become single spec to cut down on costs. Moto2 runs spec engines, but chassis choice is free.
In the days of 125cc and 250cc, manufacturers built machinery specifically for these classes. World titles in 250cc or Moto3, for example, count in the official record books alongside a manufacturer’s premier class championships.
In terms of public perception, these titles matter. Danny Kent’s 2015 Moto3 title made mainstream UK news due to him becoming the first British world champion since 1977, for example. And Spain’s domination of the motorcycle racing landscape nowadays is owed entirely to Angel Nieto raising the profile of the sport in his home country.
And Nieto never won a premier class championship. In a glittering career he won 13 world titles (or 12+1, as he referred to them because of his superstitions), all of them on 125cc and 50cc machinery. When he passed away in 2017, the outpouring of emotion from the world of motorcycle racing was massive.
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Angel Nieto tribute following his death in 2017
© Gold and Goose
At the time, the official MotoGP website wrote: “This dominance and brilliance over 19 years at the top established him as one of the all-time elite – alongside the likes of Giacomo Agostini, Valentino Rossi, Mike Hailwood and Phil Read in the annals of two-wheeled history.”
Sure, the absolute cream of the crop in MotoGP history are the dominant title winners in the premier class: Valentino Rossi, Marc Marquez, Mick Doohan, Giacomo Agostini, Eddie Lawson, etc.
But you try telling Rossi he’s not a nine-time world champion, or telling Freddie Spencer he only won one world title in 1985.
Even now to the riders, championship victories in the lower categories are significant. When Alex Marquez won his first MotoGP race at the Spanish Grand Prix earlier this year, he said: “It’s the same level as my two titles. Today was on that level.”
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MotoGP is currently risking an identity crisis
The problem Liberty and Dorna are going to have with trying to impose historical blindness on the championship is that it just simply won’t be heeded. The championship broadcaster aside, most are very unlikely to ignore such pivotal moments in a rider’s career – especially not now, when Marc Marquez is on the edge of equalling Valentino Rossi’s nine world titles.
From a purely marketing point of view, it’s a massive own goal for the championship not to hype that up given the 10-year anniversary of the pair’s massive falling out at the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix and the subsequent bad blood that remains to this day. There is also the situation where a win on Sunday at Motegi will make Marquez a 100-time grand prix winner across all classes, putting him 15 away from Rossi and 23 away from being Agostini’s all-time 122 tally. But the new policy would mean it was only his 74th MotoGP win.
More importantly, though, the riders are not going to ignore their achievements. The personal sacrifices that went into those moments have built them into the riders they are today. That was evident from Marquez’s last world title in 2019, when he celebrated with a giant eight ball to symbolise his eight crowns.
After the years of injury toil, do you really believe Marquez is going to effectively dock himself a couple of titles to hold up a No.7 board just to keep some out of touch owners happy?
MotoGP should be open to new ideas from Liberty and copying things that worked in growing F1. But there is very much a fine line between success and identity crisis. That is the realm MotoGP has ventured into of late. The pre-race national anthem ceremony at Misano, copying F1’s format, was one thing. It’s a pointless display of pageantry but one that fundamentally does nothing to impact the series as a whole.
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But rewriting a history it has literally only had months of involvement in is a move from Liberty that shows an extreme amount of ignorance and only serves to risk MotoGP’s unique identity and its growth…
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