MotoGP 2025 season opener revelation Ai Ogura was probably going to be on the grid one way or the other this year, given that had the Trackhouse Aprilia gig not materialised you'd think he'd have finally accepted that LCR Honda seat that long had his name on it.
But to say MotoGP teams were lining up to make Ogura an offer - which at least the Thailand Grand Prix suggests they maybe should've been doing - would be a misrepresentation, and this would've been at least in part due to the fact that riders who have stayed in Moto2 for so long have fallen out of vogue in the premier class.
Of its most recent new champions - Joan Mir, Fabio Quartararo, Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin - none spent more than two seasons in Moto2, and Mir was actually a Moto2 one-and-done. And take any unambiguously successful rookie season from, say, 2019 onwards, and you'd name Miguel Oliveira, Brad Binder and Marco Bezzecchi as outliers in terms of above-average Moto2 experience - but all spent less time there than Ogura.
And whatever Ogura's rookie season looks like from here, one thing he has already clearly shown is you can get a really good level of out-of-the-box performance from a 24-year-old rookie drawing on the experience of over 70 intermediate-class starts.
With that in mind, here are five riders with a similar Moto2 statistical profile to Ogura who MotoGP could yet come to see in a new light.
Aron Canet
Age 25
87 Moto2 starts
Aron Canet probably tanked his premier-class appeal by taking until start #69 to finally win in Moto2 - he just kept coming up short again and again before that - and will be a difficult sell to MotoGP teams at his age.
Those teams also like to see peaks, and Canet has so far shown little sign of going on the kind of multi-win Moto2 run that gave Fermin Aldeguer a factory Ducati MotoGP contract. Any chance of Canet joining Aldeguer in MotoGP surely rests on him winning the title this year.
And yet...title or no title, his CV in the grand prix paddock since joining in 2016 is MotoGP-ish, more so than of some of the riders who did get a shot.
Who's to say that, even if he wouldn't be a true young rider even by MotoGP standards, he couldn't be an asset to some satellite team like Johann Zarco, debuting at age 26, was for Tech3 Yamaha back in the day.
Manu Gonzalez
Age 22
61 Moto2 starts
Manu Gonzalez, coming off a very convincing win in the season opener in Buriram, is younger than it feels he should be. At his age he's already managed to build a fair amount of Moto2 experience after pivoting from the World Superbike paddock, where he'd had considerable success in those feeder series.
Teams would not be wrong to view him as some combination of 'the next Franco Morbidelli' and 'the next Augusto Fernandez', two other riders who made it to MotoGP after bailing on the WSBK ladder.
And both ultimately proved reasonable bets for the premier class.
Alonso Lopez
Age 23
59 Moto2 starts
Rumoured to be of interest to Yamaha at various points during the years, Alonso Lopez was an unremarkable Moto3 (grand prix) rider but arguably outshone a rookie Pedro Acosta in his first proper go at world championship Moto2 in 2022.
His long-time affiliation with intermediate-class manufacturer Boscoscuro as its factory rider means he ended up directly compared to - and overall outshone by, though not by a lot - Aldeguer, and the same risks happening again this year with a new team-mate - whose name will pop up on this list shortly. And it hasn't helped that Lopez has started the campaign injured.
But given he has carved out the career he has while being above 180cm (5'11'') in height, surely there are still those curious about whether he'd be an even better fit for an even bigger bike.
Celestino Vietti
Age 23
73 Moto2 starts
Celestino Vietti has begun the Moto2 season as the best rider on a Boscoscuro, though has no points to show for it due to a Buriram crash with Senna Agius.
While he's a long-time member of Valentino Rossi's VR46 Academy, it's clear VR46 doesn't feel he's done enough yet in the intermediate class to be truly in the mix for one of its MotoGP seats. And you have to wonder whether he'll ever be ahead of VR46's current MotoGP rider proteges - Morbidelli, Luca Marini, Bezzecchi and Bagnaia - in the priority queue.
But maybe a seat will open up and none of them will need it. And while Vietti has only really inspired in flashes in Moto2, there's been enough of those flashes to suggest he'd already make a reasonable MotoGP rider.
Tony Arbolino
Age 24
78 Moto2 starts
Tony Arbolino has seemingly come the closest of any of these five to getting a MotoGP deal, but hasn't been at his usual level since Moto2 switched to Pirelli rubber from Dunlop last year.
Teams are likely to take Pirelli form as more of a sign of MotoGP readiness than Dunlop form - or at least I would, anyway - but with Arbolino already part of the Pramac Yamaha Moto2 set-up, at least it's very clear what exact ride he would be in position to get if he suddenly rediscovers his form of old.
These five are likely not as good as Ogura - there's a reason he's a Moto2 champion and they're not - but, again, the difference in statistical profiles is hardly astronomical. See for yourself:
Moto2 stats
Ogura - 73 starts, 6 wins, 19 podiums
Gonzalez - 61 starts, 2 wins, 7 podiums
Lopez - 59 starts, 3 wins, 15 podiums
Canet - 87 starts, 4 wins, 29 podiums
Vietti - 73 starts, 7 wins, 11 podiums
Arbolino - 78 starts, 6 wins, 16 podiums
Moto2 laps led
Canet - 166
Lopez - 141
Arbolino - 108
Vietti - 95
Ogura - 84
Gonzalez - 19
Points per Moto2 start
Ogura - 10.6
Canet - 9.9
Lopez - 8.3
Arbolino - 8.2
Vietti - 7.3
Gonzalez - 6.8
It doesn't seem a big stretch to suggest that at least one of these five riders would be a substantial MotoGP asset.
But which one? That's the tricky side of it.
In an interview with The Race, Trackhouse boss Davide Brivio said the team took a closer look at Ogura's riding style and expected that what it saw would translate well to MotoGP - but also acknowledged, by and large, that it takes a leap of faith.
MotoGP's smaller teams - which are the ones you'd expect to be bringing in rookies - have no way of empirically seeing whether a rookie would be a good fit for the MotoGP bike the team can offer them.
"[In Formula 1] they give them the possibility to run in FP1 - probably this is not in the mentality of MotoGP," said Brivio, who had spent time in the Alpine F1 team.
"But yes, it would be nice maybe to have a possibility to test them. But for instance this is also a dilemma - we, as an independent team, are not allowed to have a separate test. Unless you bring a rookie to a Monday [post-race] test, but the testing possibilities are so few that you want to spend them for your [current] rider.
"We can do more... it depends, what do you like more? Do you like more the challenge to surprise, or to have testing and make a choice?
"In F1, first of all they have simulators, so they can spend many hours at the simulator, and this is very close to what they're going to be doing [in real life] on the track. And also - I was involved in the Alpine Academy, and for instance I remember Oscar Piastri, in the year that he didn't race F1, he had 10 days of testing with an F1 car, he had the FP1 sessions and stuff like that. So for sure you get more prepared.
"You know what? In the motorcycle world, there's not that type of mentality."
The out-of-nowhere emergence of Quartararo as a superstar six years ago didn't change that. But maybe the example of Ogura will - if he continues on anywhere near this trajectory.
