Spanish racer Raul Fernandez will remain with the Trackhouse Aprilia team for the 2025 and 2026 MotoGP seasons.
Fernandez has signed a new deal with the US-based team in a move that comes as little surprise given strong hints dropped by both rider and team management in recent weeks.
However, the duration of the deal - a two-year commitment, which is the norm for factory deals but not for satellite teams when their riders aren't directly factory-contracted, as Trackhouse's won't be in 2025 - is revealing, reinforcing that the enthusiasm over Fernandez's potential on the side of both the team and Aprilia is genuine.
The news, announced during MotoGP's summer break, comes just ahead of Fernandez’s expected debut on 2024-spec factory machinery at the next round of the championship at Silverstone, jumping from last year’s machine onto the same latest-spec bike that his current team-mate Miguel Olivera already has.
A target for Aprilia's ranks ever since he put together one of the most impressive rookie Moto2 seasons ever seen, the Spaniard initially stepped up to the premier class with KTM for a rookie campaign by the end of which the two sides appeared only too happy to go their separate ways.
Switching to Aprilia machinery in the RNF Racing squad for 2023, things didn’t go considerably better for him in the rocky realities of the Razlan Razali-run team's final season - but he was able to weather the collapse of the outfit at the end of the year and has quickly built himself a strong reputation with its successor Trackhouse.
He seems to be finally starting to live up to his Moto2 potential in 2024 by often being ahead of team-mate Oliveira despite the mismatch in bike spec - though Oliveira shone last time out at the Sachsenring.
“I’m super happy to remain with Trackhouse Racing MotoGP,” Fernandez said in a team press release. “That’s all we wanted; this new project, with [team owner] Justin [Marks] and [team manager] Davide [Brivio], is great and they have built a very good team.
“I am delighted to hear their plans for the future as they have a clear idea of what they want to do and for me, from the beginning of the year, it was my priority to try to stay in the team. At the end, I get to be here for the next two years which leaves me very satisfied but, of course, this also means we have a lot of work to do.
“We will have the full factory material in 2025 and 2026, obviously great news and right now, we are gearing up to start with a new bike in the middle of this year, so we have to make good use of this to prepare for next year as well.
“We need to stay calm, understand everything about the bike and see what we have to do for the 2025 season – it is very important.”
While one side of the box might now be sorted, it’s less clear what will happen on the other side of the garage as Trackhouse mulls its options.
Believed to be leaning heavily towards Australian racer Jack Miller as a replacement for Miguel Oliveira, the teaser for Tuesday’s announcement had seemed to hint that it would be a new rider who Trackhouse was preparing to unveil rather than a contract extension.
Should that news still come before the next round of the championship at Silverstone, Miller’s expected move to the American team and the imminent announcement that Italian racer Fabio Di Giannantonio will remain with the VR46 Ducati team for next year would help fix in place the remaining places on the grid by opening a path for Oliveira to now find his way onto a Pramac Yamaha for 2025.
POTENTIAL 2025 MOTOGP RIDER LINE-UP
Ducati: Pecco Bagnaia, Marc Marquez
Gresini Ducati: Alex Marquez, Fermin Aldeguer
VR46 Ducati: Fabio Di Giannantonio, Franco Morbidelli
KTM: Pedro Acosta, Brad Binder
Tech3 KTM: Enea Bastianini, Maverick Vinales
Aprilia: Jorge Martin, Marco Bezzecchi
Trackhouse Aprilia: Raul Fernandez, Jack Miller
Yamaha: Fabio Quartararo, Alex Rins
Pramac Yamaha: Miguel Oliveira, Sergio Garcia or another rookie
Honda: Joan Mir. Luca Marini
LCR Honda: Johann Zarco, Takaaki Nakagami or Ai Ogura
Unconfirmed riders in italics
