Petro Acosta (GasGas KTM) celebrates in front of his fans after finishing second in the sprint race in Jerez de la Frontera on April 27, 2024. Having started his rookie season with (too) much advance praise, the long-desired record victory as the youngest rider in the premier class of all time never came to pass. As we already emphasized at the start of the season, the expectations of the media and the public were far too high. The young man from Murcia, only 20 years old, had to learn the hard way that there is only one Marc Marquez.

Drastic cuts for MotoGP for 2025

Even though Pedro Acosta finished sixth in the World Championship in his first MotoGP season, the young star clearly missed his targets for 2024 despite several podium finishes. The Spaniard saw the finish flag far too rarely, especially in the last quarter of his rookie season. But for the coming year, this is likely to be the smallest of his problems. As it recently emerged, his employer KTM, with boss Stefan Pierer, who may be suffering from megalomania, had definitely gone too far and is facing complete collapse. Countless voices in Austria condemn the formerly successful businessman for deliberately driving the brand, which he had brought back to life after bankruptcy in the early 1990s, into the wall. Whether Pedro will really be able to compete on a KTM next season is considered highly questionable, if not unrealistic. Without him and fifth-placed Brad Binder, as well as the Tech 3 team, for which Acosta still rode in 2024, Ducati should have an even easier time in the title fight.

Brad Binder – here with a highsider in Jerez – definitely imagined his rise to fame in MotoGP to be different from what he experienced with KTM when he entered the premier class. Like Acosta, however, the South African is currently facing completely different problems. Unless the billions in debt accumulated by KTM can be voluntarily written off to a fraction by its numerous creditors, there will be no more year for the Oranges, unless mega-sponsor Red Bull saves the company’s continued operation.

The reasons for the KTM drama

Since the end of November 2024, it has been clear that Stefan Pierer had paid out completely inappropriately high dividends to shareholders even at a time when KTM’s losses (from 2022) had already reached three-digit millions. Even after receiving Corona aid of over 10 million euros, the KTM boss, described by many as an extremely cold-blooded manager, was still afraid of paying out huge amounts of “profit distributions” to the owners and thus primarily to himself. The way the man has acted in recent years has very little to do with responsible entrepreneurship. Over 1,000 formerly proud KTM employees have already lost their jobs and the rest are worried about their future; without November salaries and Christmas bonuses, countless of them are threatened with their livelihoods. According to the latest assessment by experts in the country, a further 500 employees are to be laid off by the end of 2024 alone. We must not forget the numerous suppliers to whom the Oranges owe money and whose existence is now threatened by the KTM drama, which also includes their employees and is likely to result in thousands of additional victims. Pierer himself was considered a billionaire before the mega-crash for which he was responsible, but many observers doubt that the Austrian is really prepared to reinvest significant parts of the huge sums he took out of the company even in bad times back into KTM. Like Austria’s real estate bankruptcy king Benko, he has long since placed significant parts of his assets in foundations in order to protect them from the authorities of the Alpine state in the event of criminal prosecution.

Stefan Pierer was once celebrated as one of Austria’s most successful top managers, but it has recently been revealed that he is responsible for the fourth largest corporate bankruptcy in his country since the war. At between 2 and 3 billion euros, the damage he caused to the economy and the state, as well as to countless companies and employees, is simply catastrophic. What remains absolutely incomprehensible is the fact that KTM, knowing that it was in huge debt, continued to purchase materials from its suppliers for many months after it was already clear that it would never be able to cover the costs.

Quo vadis MotoGP?

Since the FIM introduced the so-called track limits in MotoGP and WorldSBK for the 2019 season, which many fans and pilots consider to be pointless, our interest in the two series has at least decreased considerably. Even before the pandemic, the number of our travel bookings dropped significantly because we had to observe far too often that the FIM stewards often punished in a highly one-sided manner, perhaps even intentionally. There are numerous examples of this on our site from this time and there was obviously a pattern that also applied to the sanctions for other offenses. Ducati factory riders were suspiciously often not punished for clear fouls, whether in the prototypes or, as in the example of Magny-Cours 2023 with Bautista in the WorldSBK. The little Spaniard even pushed his teammate Rinaldi off the track in turn 5, injuring him in the process, and despite all of this, the Aruba.it Ducati factory rider was not punished at the time. But things got even worse and the most bizarre, not to say idiotic rule to date was applied to the 2024 season and the so-called Tyre Pressure Regulations were the last straw for us. Since drivers have been subsequently sanctioned for tyre pressures that deviate too much during a race, we have reached rock bottom and said goodbye to reporting.

Fabio Quartararo (Monster Energy Yamaha) in front of the MotoGP paddock in Le Mans. The Frenchman is unlikely to have many friends at the FIM. When he crashed at turn 5 at the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix in Assen and Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia), who was driving to his right, had to swerve into the gravel, the crowd favorite from Nice was subsequently punished by the FIM, even though the Spaniard later even finished on the podium. Numerous other drivers went unpunished when they brought down a competitor without even crashing themselves. In the 2024 Jerez sprint race, Fabio was one of the first victims of the nonsensical new tire pressure regulation, which meant he only came fourth, while a local hero, Dani Pedrosa, benefited from it by coming third – was it all a coincidence?

The only important thing for Dorna – money

That’s how an insider who had been in the paddock for a very long time explained it to us many years ago. It has since become clear that, in addition to the FIM, the rights-holding company Dorna, run by Spaniard Ezpeleta, is effectively the biggest evil in MotoGP. While the FIM has been playing tricks on the world championship since its inception, Dorna boss Ezpeleta often praises himself for having taken the world championship to new heights. In fact, however, the commercialization of two-wheeled road racing by him and his people has reached a point over time that has alienated many true fans. Ticket prices have literally gone through the roof in some countries like Italy and anyone who looks at the VIP offer these days can hardly believe their eyes. Just do the math: An estimated 10,000 VIP visitors in Misano, for example, paid an average of at least 15 to 20 million euros for their privileged access, some of which even included access to the starting grid. With an average ticket price for a normal fan of around 100 euros, this would require far more than a hundred thousand visitors.

Carlos Ezpeleta 1992 – the diminutive Spaniard seems to have taken the former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone as his role model. He became filthy rich through MotoGP and with the sale of Dorna to Liberty Media at the end of 2024, his wealth is likely to have increased significantly again. However, anyone who is bothered by his smug demeanor can rest assured. Like the similarly publicity-hungry FIM President Jorge Viegas, the Dorna boss is now getting on in years and the two are likely to be replaced in the foreseeable future. Whether things will get better after that remains questionable.

The current problems of MotoGP

In addition to the dark clouds over KTM, the second-best manufacturer in the 2024 season, and the associated threat that a manufacturer with four motorcycles could be missing next season, MotoGP has long been suffering from the same illness as WorldSBK. Benefiting from the preferential treatment of the FIM, the near-production world championship gradually transformed from 2019 into a Ducati Cup with the participation of a few extras such as BMW, Honda, Kawasaki and Yamaha. Even the 6-time world champion Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu (at least until 2023 on Kawasaki and then Yamaha) mostly had no chance against the MotoGP replicas from Italy. With their maximum speeds of over 16,000 rpm permitted by the FIM (for Kawasaki and Yamaha in particular, the limit was 1,000 to 1,500 rpm lower for years). Alvaro Bautista literally flew past his opponents in acceleration and top speed in the 2019 season and after his return to the Reds for the 2022 season, two years of absolute dominance followed. Since 2022, MotoGP has also followed the same path and the question before the race was almost always which Ducati rider would win this time.

Our photo before the start of the 2019 Qatar Grand Prix with, from left, the exceptional talent Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda), former idol Valentino Rossi (Monster Energy Yamaha) and rookie “Pecco” Bagnaia (Pramac Ducati). While his mentor Rossi is increasingly disqualifying himself as a hero with his never-ending slander about the man with the number 93, his compatriot with the number 63 is at the peak of his career, even if he narrowly missed the title in 2024.

One-sidedness quickly leads to boredom in sports

We have studied the history of motorcycle road racing extremely intensively, drawing on one of the richest digital archives on the subject worldwide. We keep noticing periods in which a rider or his make dominated the world championship almost at will. The most blatant example compared to Ducati today was MV Agusta and, from their entry in the 1960s until their withdrawal at the end of 1967, Honda, which often beat the competition to the ground. The Japanese manufacturer only disappeared with immediate effect due to a cylinder restriction introduced by the FIM, which came as a complete surprise to them. This was not the first scandal at the time and unfortunately also not the last caused by the highest motorsport authority. This meant that the four-stroke engines of what is now the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer suddenly had no chance and the European factories were among the main beneficiaries. What hardly anyone knows today is the fact that the Italian manufacturer even won all categories in the 1960 season. At that time, this was up to 125 cc, 250 cc (both Carlo Ubbiali), 350 cc and also (as with the 350s with John Surtees) the premier class up to 500 cc. This one-sidedness was and is of course very damaging to the excitement that is so important in two-wheeled sport.

The official results sheet from the sprint race at the Valencia replacement in Barcelona is not unusual. With the exception of test driver Pirro, all Ducatis were in the top ten and only rarely, as in this case, was local hero Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia), who grew up in the neighboring town of the Circuito de Cataluña, able to get in between KTM spearhead Brad Binder. Two laps earlier, no one managed to do this in BuriRam (Thailand) and Ducati all took the top 8 places in the Tissot Sprint Race.

Our conclusion after many years of motorsport reporting

In particular, the new regulations introduced by the FIM, due to their all too often one-sided and therefore unfortunately unfair handling by their commissioners, led to us now and probably finally saying goodbye to MotoGP and WorldSBK reporting. At the same time, we also decided not to travel to events, partly for the simple reason that, as in the case of Cremona 2024 at their WSBK premiere, prices went through the roof. Anyone who wanted to spend more than one day at the track and also paddock access (in Assen, for example, included in the price for less than 70 EUR free of charge) could not get away with less than 200 euros. We are happy to boycott such organizers and also those in Most (Czech Republic), who, according to many disappointed fans, sold fake weekend tickets that are only valid for one day instead of the two printed on the label. We have recently been combing through our archives and there may soon be some reports on this page about the history of road two-wheel racing and the heroes of that time. Now that WorldSBK promises to be more balanced again in the future and Marc Marquez finally has the same quality material as his strongest competitors, we are at least looking forward to future events with a certain amount of interest. However, we will refrain from writing detailed reports on this in the future for reasons mentioned in this article and hopefully obvious to everyone.

Spectators at the race on the Berlin Avus in 1933 – a time when people were happy to own a bicycle at all and, despite the modest prices at the time, often did not have enough money for visitor tickets.
Our photo of the free spectators at the WorldSBK event in Imola on Sunday morning in May 2019 is very reminiscent of the pre-war years in Berlin. However, it is easy to see that the vehicles in our photo were by no means cheap. Despite this, many motorsport fans from Italy decided not to buy tickets after the price had almost doubled compared to the previous year.

Unless otherwise stated, this applies to all images (© MotoGP).