Ai Ogura's brace of top-five finishes at the Thai Grand Prix was one of the most impressive MotoGP debuts in years.
But the Moto2 champion's start to MotoGP life could have looked very different had he conceded to his then-bosses Honda and taken the MotoGP path that they laid out for him years ago.
Ogura is, it's worth noting, very much a product of Honda's system in the junior classes. An early member of its talent development ladder, Ogura first became associated with Honda in the Asia Talent Cup series, where he finished the 2016 season runner-up to fellow 2025 MotoGP rookie Somkiat Chantra.
Transitioning from there to the Asia Talent Team in the Spanish-based JuniorGP series, he then made his first steps into the grand prix paddock with the Honda Team Asia squad run by former factory Honda MotoGP racer Hiroshi Aoyama.
Progressing through the ranks from Moto3 to Moto2 with the team, Ogura looked very much set to be the ordained replacement for LCR Honda rider Taka Nakagami when the time was right - and it briefly seemed that that time would come at the end of his ultimately unsuccessful run at the 2022 Moto2 title.
Riding for Honda's factory Moto2 team and backed by Japanese fuel station chain Idemitsu, which also sponsors half of the LCR garage in a seat reserved for developing Asian talent, it's no secret that Ogura came under considerable pressure to replace Nakagami at the end of 2022 even after he failed to win the Moto2 title against Augusto Fernandez.
However, while many others - especially Japanese racers - would have folded to that pressure and ended up riding the punishingly bad Honda RC213V in 2023, to Ogura's credit he simply refused - and rather than remaining a part of Honda development programme instead walked away to join rival Moto2 team MTA.
Clearly, as we can now see, that was the boost that Ogura clearly needed. Losing out in 2023 thanks to a badly broken wrist in testing that waylaid his season and meant he couldn't do anything better than ninth, he rectified that in 2024 with a strong championship campaign that brought him the crown with plenty of races spare.
Despite Ogura having made something of a defection, Honda nonetheless stuck with him as a personal sponsor, clearly desperate to still try to find a way to retain his services in MotoGP even if (as Ogura eventually proved) a move away from its junior squad was what he needed to finally clinch the Moto2 title.
However, that wasn't to be either, with the 24-year-old once again deciding to reject strong advances from Honda last year - and he wasn't shy about why, either.
"To move up to MotoGP, I had to decide based on what I see - which are the standings, the rankings," he said shortly after signing for Trackhouse Aprilia last year.
"This is the only argument I have, and Aprilia is ahead. From a rider's perspective, you always decide considering which bike is stronger and the results. That's how I made my decision."
With that title success came an Aprilia-powered MotoGP debut with Trackhouse and a shot at very different MotoGP career, one that would almost certainly have started much closer to where former Asia Talent Cup rival, Honda Team Asia team-mate and Barcelona housemate Chantra finished on his first ride replacing Nakagami at LCR: 25 seconds and 12 places behind Ogura's Aprilia.
