OPINION: Erasing Moto2 & Moto3 Is Erasing MotoGP History
by David Emmett | Sat, 20/Sep/2025 - 20:36
It has been a good time to be a purveyor of ragebait in the MotoGP media. The confluence of the launching of the MotoGP Hall of Fame, which allows only riders from the premier class, the request by Dorna to Marc Márquez and broadcasters to refer to his imminent championship as his seventh rather than ninth title, discounting his championships in the 125cc and Moto2 classes, and reduction in paddock space for the Moto2 and Moto3 classes has created a perfect storm for outrage. And outrage breeds clickbait, and clickbait generates pageviews.
Clearly, these moves are wrongheaded. But many of the stories and videos posted about these moves have wrongly attributed this to Liberty Media, who now own the sport. That completely ignores the fact that Dorna has been reducing the coverage and significance of the Moto2 and Moto3 classes for roughly the last three years. If this has come from anywhere, it has come from Dorna itself. Liberty may back these moves, but they are not being done reluctantly at the behest of the US media giant.
For the past couple of seasons - since before talks even started about a takeover of Dorna - Dorna has been reducing the attention paid to Moto2 and Moto3, reducing coverage, social media posts, news stories on the website, and more. The push has been to promote MotoGP as the pinnacle of grand prix motorcycle racing, and leave the support classes to fend for themselves.
To an extent, that is understandable. MotoGP is what draws the fans in. TV audiences double, triple, quadruple for MotoGP races compared to Moto2 and Moto3. It features the most advanced motorcycles and the very best riders in the world, the fans knowing most of their names.
But you cannot erase all of history. Unlike in other branches of motorsport, grand prix motorcycle racing has always featured multiple classes, with riders switching between classes. A grand prix consists of three races on Sunday, for three classes and has throughout history, though the day and number of classes has varied. The premier class, be it 500cc or MotoGP, has always been the main attraction, hence the moniker Class of Kings.
That has been clear from the MotoGP Legends project. The 39-strong list of people involved in the sport includes the obvious premier class champions: Giacomo Agostini, Valentino Rossi, Mick Doohan, Freddie Spencer, Kenny Roberts. But also there are riders like legendary 250cc racer Anton Mang, 250cc and 350cc hero Kork Ballington, and multiple 50cc champion Hans-Georg Anscheidt.
It also rightly includes the late IRTA secretary Mike Trimby, the man who worked tirelessly to improve safety alongside the riders, and thereby probably saved the lives of dozens of riders over the years. (If anything, more figures like Trimby should be included alongside the riders).
At Misano, Dorna announced the introduction of the Hall of Fame. The selection criteria for this are fixed and measurable: a rider has to have either 2 premier class titles or 25 premier class GP wins, and they are automatically inducted.
The idea behind the Hall of Fame is, according to Dorna's Chief Sporting Officer Carlos Ezpeleta, to highlight the achievements in the premier class and create an objective criteria for inclusion. (For the full back story, plus interviews with Ezpeleta and others involved, read Adam Wheeler's excellent piece on the Motor Sport Magazine website, and listen to Adam and Neil Morrison on episode 511 of the Paddock Pass Podcast.)
The idea of having objective criteria is sympathetic, but it ignores just how much grand prix motorcycle racing has changed over the years. When the FIM World Championship was first contested back in 1949, the season consisted of 6 rounds. To win 25 GPs, a rider would have had to win every race in 1949, 1950, 1951, and over half of the 1952 season.
In the current era, a rider could rack up 25 wins by winning every race in a single season, plus a handful of races at the beginning of the next. And if Dorna gets its way, and the season is expanded to 25 races, they could do it in a single year.
That isn't the only way grand prix motorcycle racing has changed, of course. Once upon a time, a grand prix weekend saw racing in 50cc, 125cc, 250cc, 350cc, and 500cc classes, with riders entered in multiple classes. At some rounds, they were joined by the sidecars, back when that was a GP class. Over the years, the 50cc class was replaced by the 80cc class, and then dropped altogether, along with the 350cc class. And best not bring up the Formula 750 series at all.
But that isn't the biggest objection to the MotoGP Hall of Fame. That has to be the absence of Ángel Nieto. To call the Spaniard legendary is to understate his importance to the sport of motorcycle racing. Nieto was pivotal to the growth of racing in Spain, and used his charisma and personal friendship with King Juan Carlos I of Spain to promote and secure the future and direction of racing. Nieto, along with Valentino Rossi, are the two most important figures in motorcycle racing.
You can point to Nieto having 90 grand prix victories in the 125cc, 80cc and 50cc classes, or his combined 13 (or 12+1, for the superstitious Spaniard) titles in 125s and 50s. But more importantly, you cannot overstate how much of an inspiration he was for the riders that followed. Without Ángel Nieto, there is no Alberto Puig, no Alex Crivillé, no Sete Gibernau. There is no Dani Pedrosa, no Jorge Lorenzo. Without Ángel Nieto, there is no Marc Márquez, the rider who is currently smashing his way through the record book to his ninth (yes, ninth) title.
Yet Ángel Nieto is to be excluded from the MotoGP Hall of Fame, because Nieto's achievements all came in the smaller classes. To the motorcycle racing world, he is Ángel Nieto 12+1. To Dorna, he is Ángel Nieto 0+0.
The Hall of Fame is an American invention (though based on the Ruhmeshalle, a hall of famous Bavarians built in Munich, Germany in 1853). For most sports, nominations can come from anyone, but inclusion is done by a selection committee consisting of prominent figures and journalists in the sport. That allows for a much wider view of the significance of figures in the sport. This, to me, would be a better way of celebrating the sport.
Ángel Nieto is the irrefutable argument for the significance of the support classes in MotoGP. But that doesn't mean that the focus shouldn't be on the premier class. There are moves to take the Moto2 and Moto3 classes out of the garages in pit lane and put them in tents inside the paddock. This is already the case for part of the Moto2 and Moto3 field: only the most successful teams get a spot in a garage, and even then, they are squeezed in three teams to a box.
Putting the teams in tents may actually make it easier to plan, as they will always know where they are going to be and how much space they will have (more than in a pit lane garage at the moment). So that is not necessarily a bad move.
Worse would be the splitting of the paddocks into a MotoGP space and a space for Moto2 and Moto3. We have already had an experiment with this after the global financial crisis hit in late 2008. Access to an inner sanctum of MotoGP hospitalities was only granted to a limited number of pass holders. It was such a roaring success that it barely lasted two seasons.
The reasons for abandoning it were simple. It was inconvenient for MotoGP pass holders, including team owners and riders, who had to pass through scan points multiple times just walking to and from the garage. It did not end up attracting more sponsors for a more exclusive experience. And it made it less attractive for Moto2 and Moto3 sponsors, who lost out on the ability to go and gawk at the MotoGP hospitality units and riders.
The Moto2 and Moto3 teams have already been the worst hit by MotoGP's switch from free-to-air to paid broadcasting. While Dorna have done well to subsidize the independent MotoGP teams by €3.5 million per rider, Moto2 and Moto3 teams receive around €260,000 and €200,000 respectively. The budget for a MotoGP team is somewhere between €10-15 million, €2.5-3 million for Moto2, and €1.5 million for Moto3.
The Moto2 and Moto3 races going behind a decoder in the key markets - Spain and Italy - have radically reduced the exposure of the classes. The case teams used to be able to make to sponsors - audiences of 1 million plus in Spain - has gone, the amount sponsors are willing to pay for and audience a tenth of that size being much lower.
Moto2 and Moto3 teams are already struggling with budgets. The expansion to 22 races has been harder on them than on the MotoGP class, and if, as has been suggested, the calendar expands to 25 races, it would be almost impossible. MotoGP teams would struggle to staff a team for 25 rounds, so it would ask too much of a Moto2 or Moto3 team. Some team staff in the support classes already have to work second jobs in the winter to earn enough to be able to afford to work a season in Moto2 or Moto3. Shortening the winter break would make it even tougher.
Reducing the significance of Moto2 and Moto3 reduces the attractiveness of those classes to sponsors even further. That doesn't just reduce the pool of money for Moto2 and Moto3, it also closes off a doorway for bringing sponsors in through a smaller investment. A sponsor can dip their toes in the water in Moto3 or Moto2, and decide to expand into MotoGP after a couple of seasons once they see the benefits.
(Even though the benefits for most sponsors are, to be honest, getting to hang out in the paddock and soaking up the atmosphere. Sports sponsorship is largely a result of a person with access to a large budget finding an excuse to spend someone else's money to allow them to get to a race.)
Most of all, it strips away the narrative of a rider's rise through the ranks. Valentino Rossi first caught the attention of the media by riding around Mugello with a blow up sex doll on the back of his 125cc Aprilia, a dig at archrival (even though he didn't know it) Max Biaggi. Fans watched Rossi's antics in 125s and 250s, and fell in love with him before he even arrived in MotoGP.
The same is true for Marc Márquez. One of Márquez' most memorable races is Estoril 2010, when he crashed on the sighting lap, calmly sat in the pits while they repaired his bike, started from the back of the grid, and went on to win the race, thereby putting one hand on his first championship. That really caught the attention of the fans and the media, and they followed him into Moto2 and MotoGP.
The significance of Moto2 and Moto3 cannot be overstated for the narrative in MotoGP. Take Pedro Acosta: it is clear that Acosta is an immense talent, yet he is still to win a single MotoGP race. To understand the hype around Acosta, you have to know the back story, how he won his first ever Moto3 race from pit lane, the Moto3 title in his rookie season, and was unstoppable in his second season in Moto2.
We are seeing something similar play out in 2025. David Alonso is one of the most remarkable talents of recent years, ripped up Moto3, and has just taken his first victory in Moto2. When he arrives in MotoGP, there will be an enormous amount of hype because of his performances in the support classes. The other candidates to make it to MotoGP, Manu Gonzalez, Dani Holgado, José Antonio Rueda, Max Quiles, Senna Agius have stories which are just as interesting.
By ignoring Moto2 and Moto3, and not putting any energy into the coverage of the classes, MotoGP loses more than it gains. Where are tomorrow's heroes supposed to come from, do they just fall out of thin air? And how will we know they are heroes if they don't have a back story to tell?
So while it may be easier to focus just on MotoGP, to highlight the premier class and pretend as if the support classes don't exist, it is a massive missed opportunity. Sport is about many things, but above all, it is about stories, about narrative. It is the story of trying, failing, and trying again. It is the story of victory and defeat, triumph and disaster, ecstasy and despair.
Marc Márquez' ninth championship is perhaps the ultimate example of this. His ninth title will be the climax to arguably the greatest sporting comeback story ever told, a story which begins with a crash in Jerez, passes through perhaps the stupidest and most hubristic sporting decision ever made, to attempt to race a few days after having his humerus plated, and that setting him on a path through pain, suffering, surgery upon surgery, and a return to form. It is a classic redemption arc, almost too much like a fairy tale to be true.
To dismiss the 2025 MotoGP crown as Márquez' seventh title is to excise an important part of the Spaniard's history. It is impossible to understand his 2025 title without knowing the story of the 2019 title. You can't understand the 2019 title without knowing about the 2015 defeat, and the controversy which surrounded that. You can't understand the 2015 defeat without knowing about his scintillating 2013 rookie season, and how close he came to losing the title.
bove all, you can't understand Marc Márquez' 2013 rookie title without the context of his two seasons in Moto2, of the double vision he suffered when he crashed at Sepang in 2011, narrowly losing out to Stefan Bradl, and the fact he won on a Suter which no one else could be competitive on. And you can't understand his Moto2 season without that amazing ride in the penultimate 125cc race of 2010 at Estoril.
The MotoGP class is the pinnacle of grand prix motorcycle racing. But a pinnacle rests on a buttress, and the buttress rests on a foundation. The peak has to have something below it for it to be the peak. And those foundations have a far, far greater value than Dorna is currently ascribing to them. And that is a deep and abiding shame.
