There are increasing calls in the MotoGP paddock for a riders’ union, modelled on Formula 1’s Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, to be formed, with the topic raised multiple times at Mugello last weekend.
Such proposals come amid rumours of significantly reduced salary options for 2023 and have been given fresh emphasis by the Speed Up Moto2 team’s mid-season sacking of Romano Fenati despite being contracted for the season.
The GPDA has run in its current guise since 1994 following the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola. It acts as a trade union for F1 drivers, with three representatives elected as directors who can then lobby the powers that be on important issues.
It is primarily a vehicle for improving F1 safety, a structure MotoGP arguably already has in the form of the safety commission – a meeting held every Friday night between whichever riders wish to attend and representatives of key stakeholders, where riders are free to air their views.
But those meetings rarely result in any form of consensus, even on major safety issues – something evidenced at the British Grand Prix in 2018, when some riders were still pushing for a race to go ahead on the waterlogged Silverstone track despite a major accident the day before in similar conditions.
With contract negotiations ongoing for 2023 and 2024 and rumours emerging about the amount some rookies in the championship are being paid in 2022, former world champion Joan Mir believes it’s time for the current crop to stop being selfish and start fighting for their fellow riders.
“This is a situation where we riders must speak internally to try and help each other a bit, but we have to stay all united – even the people that get paid more. That’s important,” he says. “For sure, if you pay less to your riders, from the outside it’s quite good because the boss can say, ‘I’ve contracted a rider for not a lot of money’.
“But the rider will not be happy, because we are playing with our lives. We have to make them understand that a rookie rider should have a minimum salary because this is dangerous.
“At the moment, it’s quite a fresh idea and I don’t want to speak a lot about it, but we can’t be selfish in this situation.”
While F1 uses an elected model, with former driver Alexander Wurz heading up the GPDA as chairman alongside Sebastian Vettel and relative newcomer George Russell, there is clearly no plan yet for how MotoGP’s version would work.
Pol Espargaro suggests it’s a role that should naturally fall to the championship’s most experienced competitor – even if that hasn’t been the case in the past.
“Since I’ve been in MotoGP I’ve heard this thing for many years, but I think this is something a leader in MotoGP needs to do – and we had one for many years who didn’t do that,” says Espargaro, in an obvious dig at nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi.
“We have the safety commission which is very nice, and we’re really grateful for that because at the end of the day many of the things we talk about are done.
“But we’ve seen in Moto2 that when one guy is leaving from the team, there is no problem. They are even starting the year leaving guys at home. For us it’s important to feel like we are protected, and at the moment I don’t feel like that. Maybe a leader can do that but I don’t think I have the power to go to the others and make them unified.
“It’s not the same thing as me going to see guys I have a good relationship with as it is a guy with many world titles going there to say something. Not just the riders are going to respect him, but the championship is too.
“I have a good relationship with all the riders, I can talk to all of them, but there are different companies here and you need quite a lot of power so I think it has to be a major figure.”
However, arguably the only rider who fits Espargaro’s description right now in MotoGP is his Honda team-mate Marc Marquez – who while supporting the idea of a riders’ representative, insists he is not the one to take on the job either, and that instead it should be passed to someone who has recently retired.
“I think that the leader needs to be someone who isn’t competing,” he says. “In saying that, it’s true that at one of the safety commissions we talked about all these things, because it looks like some riders are riding for a very low price. I’m not afraid to say it: it’s not fair that some riders in MotoGP are riding for a very low salary.
“I think I’m the guy who I think has won the most money, and for me I can say, ‘OK, shut up, for me it’s OK’. But I wasn’t that guy because it’s not fair. I’ve heard some rumours, and we know more or less what everyone is earning. It’s not normal in MotoGP, when you’re arriving at 350km/h, [to ride for such a salary] and we need to do something.
“But I’m not the person to do this. Of course I’ll be with all the riders, because I can understand the situation but I’m not the person to do this.”
