Even after MotoGP's latest injection of rookie talent in 2025, 24-year-old Raul Fernandez will remain the fourth-youngest rider on the grid - but the 2021 season that had made him a can't-miss prospect is an increasingly distant memory.
The Madrid native was superb in his sole season in Moto2, so much so that KTM accelerated him onto a MotoGP deal amid a fear Yamaha was about to poach him.
But Fernandez hasn't lived up to that on the bigger bike - not in 2022, not in 2023, not in 2024.
In each of those seasons there have been ways to explain it away, sometimes a plurality of ways, but at a certain point a MotoGP rider has to deliver consistently - or MotoGP moves on. Fernandez, having penned a Trackhouse Aprilia deal running through 2026, is in no immediate danger of being moved on from - but is in danger of his pre-MotoGP exploits being forgotten completely.
The factors that have limited Fernandez in MotoGP have included: a seeming general disillusion with KTM's project; various injuries; persistent arm pump problems, apparently much more severe than for most of his peers; buckling under the mental pressure - to the point where he sought out and benefitted from the help of a psychologist after seeing how much of an asset something like that was proving for his brother Adrian, an increasingly successful Moto3 rider.
Last year, adding on to it was a mid-season switch from a limited-but-polished 2023 Aprilia to a capricious 2024 Aprilia.
"I don't want to do this thing next year, or in my life," Fernandez said of that switch. "I would like to not repeat this thing.
"It's really difficult to change all the bike mid-season. If you change small details, OK - but the bike is completely opposite. So you need to change a lot of things on your riding style. It doesn't help."
That certainly contributed to a final result of 16th in the standings - Fernandez looked to be just hitting his stride with the year-old bike when the change snuffed out his momentum - but there was another, wider aspect to it.
Under MotoGP's current weekend format riders have to be fast from Friday already. It is something Fernandez has repeatedly pointed to and repeatedly lamented: grid position is key, but if you've missed out on one of the 10 Q2 spots on offer in Friday practice, any slight Q1 underperformance or subpar runplan, or yellow flags, or anything of the sort, can effectively ruin your weekend.
Fernandez's performance in MotoGP in general has overall seemed biased towards race pace relative to qualifying pace - but that's kind of the inverse of what he was like in the lower classes, and he believes that more than anything it's a question of in-weekend progress.
"It's true that always we're struggling a lot on Friday. But after that we find some solution," he said during the season-concluding Solidarity Grand Prix weekend.
"For the future we need to anticipate more. On Friday we are always on the back position, and after that on Saturday we are more or less better. I think during this year I was like eight times in Q2 - and just two was directly. It is something that we have to improve for the future, I can just say that."
Logically, advancing into Q2 through Friday usually means being one of the 10 fastest riders, and advancing into Q2 through Q1 usually means being the 11th- or 12th- fastest. But Fernandez is accurate to point out his reliance on Q1 success for Q2 appearances as something slightly unusual, even over such a small sample size.
Biggest share of Q2 appearances via Q1 rather than Friday practice among MotoGP full-timers in 2024
Raul Fernandez - 75% (6/8)
Miguel Oliveira - 40% (2/5)
Johann Zarco - 40% (2/5)
Brad Binder - 36% (5/14)
Fabio Quartararo - 33% (3/9)
Jack Miller - 33% (3/9)
"It's our worst point," Fernandez reiterated about his Friday performance.
"After that, if you see the gap with the factory [team riders] during the year, on Friday we are so far compared with them. Saturday we are a little bit closer. And on Sunday always we are with them more or less."
It took a little bit more media prodding through that Solidarity GP weekend for him to offer up a theory for why that is.
"We need to come to the track with something more. We need a little more Aprilia help before coming," he said.
But what is 'more'? Is it more information?
"Yes... how can I explain it? Easy, I would like to arrive to the track and Aprilia says 'you need to start with that'. That is what I would like.
"My team is amazing, how they work! If you see, [even off-track] I speak almost every day with my crew chief [Noe Herrera], and at home he's working every day. But he doesn't have everything under control. In the end, he's just my crew chief, my data engineers are just my data engineers.
"They don't have all the information for Aprilia. But I believe in them."
Soon after Fernandez was more specific - it's not a question of what tyres to use, what runplan to have, what mechanical set-up to start with. All that is secondary to the settings of the control electronics.
That, he emphasised, was "the worst point for me" in 2024 - and that is exactly where he wants more Aprilia help.
Fernandez believes that help is coming. He has repeatedly pointed to the arrival of Aprilia's new project leader Fabiano Sterlacchini (pictured above) - who Fernandez knows from his KTM stint - as a major source of optimism.
"I believe in Fabiano. I think the situation will improve a lot.
"Always when I have some problem I try to speak with him, he helps us. He's very clear, he has everything very clear on the mind. When you speak with him, it's super direct, and I'm happy.
"I was working with him in KTM, and he's one of the people that helped me a lot in KTM. So, I believe in him."
Speaking to The Race MotoGP Podcast in a special end-of-season interview - available in full via The Race Members Club - Fernandez did also point to the increased workload on his and his crew's shoulders in the latter stages of 2024.
With the way the rider market played out he was suddenly the only point of continuity between Aprilia's 2024 line-up and its 2025 roster. As a consequence "I was more or less a test rider, it was not fun".
The idea, then, is that Aprilia has deployed Fernandez as an asset in bike development without maximising his race weekends - but if that was indeed the case, it won't have been something the factory did out of selfishness. It is in Aprilia's best interest for Fernandez to succeed.
Having spent two years contracted to Aprilia, he is now switching to a deal directly with Trackhouse. But he is confident that, in addition to having the backing of Trackhouse team boss Davide Brivio, he still enjoys the support of Aprilia Racing CEO Massimo Rivola.
His longer-term roadmap with Aprilia, however, isn't so clear. The factory has refreshed its line-up - and though a works-spec bike should be made available to Fernandez next year, he didn't get to ride the newest prototype in the post-season test, instead spending the test day doing comparison runs between the '23 and the '24 bikes and working on electronics.
Sterlacchini described the unavailability of a '25 prototype to Fernandez at Barcelona as being reflective of Aprilia's continued push to make its development "more efficient" and be able to bring new parts earlier. "Obviously this is part of the process, that it's difficult to arrive here with four [new] bikes for four riders."
And Fernandez himself didn't mind publicly - but it feels accurate to suggest, at least, that his time as Aprilia's sole point of continuity between its '24 and '25 line-ups hasn't exactly made him indispensable.
How could it? The results aren't there yet. He knows that much. He also knows the word "yet" can only stay in that sentence for so long.
For now, it hasn't meaningfully threatened an early end to his MotoGP career - but it might well place a cap on the opportunities he will have in he future.
