It’s a simple fact of motorsport that every racer is always trying to prove themselves.
It’s what keeps them motivated, it’s what causes teams to hire them and, most importantly, it’s what keeps us as fans fully engaged at home.
But in the topsy-turvy world of modern MotoGP’s ultra-close racing, not everyone is out just to simply prove that they’re the fastest in the world – and that’s a fact that’s never been better highlighted than by the 2021 season’s grid.
As the new season prepares to kick off, we look at what is motivating every rider in the series, and what they need to do to prove themselves when the action bursts into life at this weekend’s Qatari Grand Prix.
Joan Mir: Prove he can win over a longer season
There is absolutely no taking away from Joan Mir’s 2020 performances. He’s a well-deserving champion whose crown loses none of its sheene because of the circumstances.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a harder feat to repeat the performance in 2021.
He’s got very different conditions to face. Different tracks, rivals who’ve switched machines or upgraded, and the looming return of Marc Marquez all mean more work for the Suzuki rider.
He showed last year that he should be up to the task, but that doesn’t mean he can get away without backing it up on track.
Alex Rins: Prove he didn’t miss his chance to beat Mir
From a riders’ championship standpoint, the ideal scenario for Rins would’ve been the GSX-RR becoming MotoGP’s best bike before team-mate Mir properly hit his stride, given Mir had graduated to the premier class after just one season of Moto2.
But Mir was already in top shape in 2020, and whatever residual edge Rins may have had over him, he wasn’t able to make much of due to an early-season injury.
If Mir’s ceiling of potential is higher, Rins’ biggest opportunity may be already gone. As Suzuki’s elder statesman (at 25!), he needs to show he still has a trick or two up his sleeve.
Valentino Rossi: Prove he still belongs
It’s not a popular opinion but there’s no denying it: Valentino Rossi’s time as a top class MotoGP rider is near its end.
It’s no shame for him at 42 years of age, but it does mean that he won’t be out to win titles in 2021 – and that the demotion to Yamaha’s satellite team was the right call.
That doesn’t mean there’s no place for him in MotoGP, though. A podium finisher in 2020 despite being on a distinctly average Yamaha M1, he seems to have found some of his mojo again at Petronas SRT.
If he can convert that into more regular podium challenges, then it’s going to shut up a lot of critics rather quickly.
Franco Morbidelli: Prove 2020 form wasn’t flattered by other Yamahas’ woes
Was that spectacular end of 2020 down to Franco Morbidelli making a step forward or the 2019 Yamaha being better than its works-spec counterpart? Rossi strongly argued for it being the former, but it’s clear that not everybody is fully sold on that explanation.
And while we won’t yet know how Morbidelli would get on with the same spec as Rossi, Fabio Quartararo and Maverick Vinales, a strong 2021 and finishing as the lead Yamaha rider again would go a long way to assuring he gets the full credit for the strides he’s made in MotoGP.
Brad Binder: Prove that win wasn’t a fluke
Binder’s win in his third-ever MotoGP race was both remarkable and fully earned, and nothing will ever take that away from him.
But the rest of his rookie campaign didn’t quite live up to that promise, and pre-season testing in Qatar certainly hasn’t so far either.
A handful of podiums and another win or two are needed in 2021 to show the Czech GP was no perfect storm.
Miguel Oliveira: Prove he can lead KTM
KTM’s two works riders would probably scoff at the idea that Pol Espargaro’s departure creates a power vacuum – after all, it was them rather than Espargaro who won races for KTM last year.
But Espargaro was still quickest on average, someone who was either faster than the other KTMs or at least within a tenth or two.
KTM is still a track-dependent bike so with Espargaro gone it needs a new benchmark for progress. Though he’s new to the works team that benchmark really should be Oliveira – he’s got more experience for Binder, has shown more consistency and capped off 2020 with an incredible Portimao weekend.
Jack Miller: Prove he’s a title contender
Miller is a man who’s been on the verge of a breakthrough for the best part of half a decade, but in 2020 he finally seemed to deliver on his potential by looking fast, comfortable, and (most importantly) consistent on the Pramac Ducati.
Promoted to the factory team as a well-earned reward, he’s got to keep his momentum going now that he’s the marque’s de facto team leader.
His strong testing performances were a positive sign, and if that form carries through to Europe then Miller will emerge as a title contender.
Pecco Bagnaia: Stop disappearing into the midfield
Here are two simple stats that paint a very distinct image of Francesco Bagnaia’s time in MotoGP so far: he scored 41% of his total points haul in 2019 in two races, and 43% of his total points haul in 2020 in a single race.
Every rider has their standout moments in a season, and Bagnaia doesn’t need to be the speed demon he was at Misano last year at every venue.
But his baseline level of competitiveness has been too low, and it won’t cut it at the works Ducati team – just ask Petrucci.
Johann Zarco: Prove rough edges are gone
Zarco found himself again in 2020, after an ill-fated move to KTM that at one point looked set to completely and utterly derail his career.
Returning to the podium, finding solace within the extended Ducati programme and landing himself a coveted Pramac seat for 2021, it was something of a redemption story for the Frenchman.
But he still managed to make headlines last year thanks to his on track antics – from his collision with Pol Espargaro at Brno to triggering the horrendous Red Bull Ring mega-shunt.
He’s got to prove that he’s redeemed himself with more than results. That means a squeaky clean season where he only makes news for all the right reasons.
Do that, and it’s a fairytale story completed.
Jorge Martin: Prove the hype won’t get to him
Much has been made of rookie Martin for quite some time. A dominant Moto3 champion, a successful Moto2 rider despite being lumbered with an uncompetitive KTM, and now a hotly anticipated newcomer to the premier class, his biggest challenge in 2021 will be remaining level-headed.
If the wheels proverbially come off, he wouldn’t be the first rookie to be undone by his preceding hype – but the 23-year-old is surrounded by both a strong personal management team and a Pramac Racing squad adept at maturing young talent.
If he takes the proffered advice and listens to what he’s told, then he’ll be just fine.
Fabio Quartararo: Prove he can recover from a slump
After nine races in 2020, Quartararo led the championship. After 14, as the season concluded, he was eighth. Between those two points in time, he scored just a miserable 12 points.
Yes, the 2020 M1 was not in good shape at that point of the season, but such a poor haul cannot be down to bike alone.
And for 2021 Quartararo needs to show that he will not let another title campaign snowball into failure like this.
Maverick Vinales: Prove the Yamaha move hasn’t been a failure
Vinales was supposed to be a champion by now, and when he swapped the Suzuki for a Yamaha it looked like he’d get his title right away.
Four years on, he’s still not come particularly close, while Suzuki got it done without him.
Maybe he doesn’t have to be champion this year. Vinales is still very young at 26, and time is on his side.
But he badly needs a season in which there are no major nadirs, no prolonged stints of confusion and frustration, to banish that feeling that it will never come together for him at Yamaha.
Danilo Petrucci: Prove his downslide isn’t irreversible
When Petrucci picked up three consecutive podiums during his first half-season as a factory Ducati rider, it was hard to imagine that he wouldn’t get another dry podium with the team and would soon be told his contract wouldn’t be extended for 2021.
But the way it all unfolded made the split fairly unsurprising. Petrucci’s decline at the red team was gradual yet sharp and seemingly irreversible.
His win in the wet at Le Mans was an enjoyable outlier in a sea of races in which he was just barely scraping into the top 10.
It’s been too long since Petrucci has looked anything like a MotoGP frontrunner in normal weekend conditions. Succeeding Oliveira at Tech3 means he’ll be judged by the Portuguese rider’s 2020 season peaks, and that will take better pace than what he’d been showing at Ducati.
Iker Lecuona: Prove he’s better than rising Moto2 stars
Lecuona had a decent rookie season in 2020 – he popped up in Q2 a couple of times, he posted several top-10 finishes and he wasn’t completely outmatched by his fellow KTM riders.
But ‘decent’ does not cut it for long in modern MotoGP. This is a grid with an absurd average level of performance, and if Lecuona doesn’t start regularly taking the fight to the other KTMs – rather than just being reasonably close – it’s easy to see KTM and Tech3 being tempted by a candidate from Moto2 instead. Someone like Remy Gardner, for instance.
Taka Nakagami: Prove he’s not a one-season wonder
Last season was something of a breakthrough year for LCR Honda rider Nakagami. Internally promoted at Honda thanks to strong results and the absence of Marc Marquez, he delivered the most consistent results of the year for the manufacturer, and earned himself a 2021-spec machine in the process.
But one year later, the onus is on him to prove that Honda was right to reward him and that last year’s successes weren’t just down to the weird conditions in which the season was run.
First and foremost will be securing the podium he missed out on last year, but by the end of the year he’ll be expected to be in contention for wins.
Alex Marquez: Prove it was worth ditching Crutchlow for him
A two-year deal for the junior Marquez has left no place in the LCR line-up for Cal Crutchlow, a long-serving rider who took the team to the top step of the podium on three occasions.
Crutchlow didn’t have a great 2020 by any means, but he leaves big shoes to fill, having made LCR accustomed to often being at the forefront of not just the independent teams’ battle but MotoGP overall.
And this means that demoting Marquez from the works team doesn’t necessarily reduce the burden of expectation.
Marc Marquez: Prove he’s still himself
Perhaps the easiest one on the grid to identify, eight-time world champion Marc Marquez’s goals for 2021 are simple.
Sitting out an entire season after badly breaking his arm in the first race of 2020, he will be coming back to prove that he is still the dominant force he was previously.
That won’t be an easy challenge given that it’s been eight months since he’s sat on his race bike, and it won’t be an easy road for him – but he’s got determination in spades and talent by the bucketload.
Pol Espargaro: Prove he can win in MotoGP
There were two races that Espargaro should’ve probably won in 2020 – Brno and Red Bull Ring 2 – and both got away from him in dramatic circumstances.
At Brno, he let rookie team-mate Binder take the initiative and then tangled with Zarco, and in the Styrian GP he lost out in a last-corner scramble. Given that he was still the quickest KTM rider, it was surprising to see him contribute to none of its three victories.
Opportunities to win will present themselves at Honda, and he has to grab them.
Enea Bastianini: Prove the worth of a Moto2 champion
Bastianini was something of a surprise winner of the 2020 Moto2 championship, coming forward from nowhere to emerge as a dark horse while many of his more experienced rivals lost their calm and threw away points left, right and centre.
He’s got the benefit of coming into a new class every bit as much an underdog as he was last year – and perhaps even the lowest rated of the series’ three new riders.
But string together a strong campaign and show he deserved his crown last year, and it’s a big vindication for Moto2 as a whole.
Luca Marini: Prove he deserves to be there as himself
It’s always going to be hard being Marini. The little brother of Rossi, it’s very rare to read a story about him that doesn’t mention the family tie – and even occasionally goes on to suggest that his career has benefitted rather substantially from who he is rather than what he’s capable of.
But the super-intelligent and calculating racer showed last year that he’s every bit as talented as the other two incoming rookies.
More than able to match Bastianini and Martin – and maybe even just slightly ahead of them in terms of big bike experience – Marini is another rider who can silence a lot of critics by delivering a strong 2021 campaign.
Aleix Espargaro: Prove Aprilia is as good as it now looks
With almost-constant rider changes and undelivered pre-season hype seemingly the two stories that dominate Aprilia’s MotoGP record, it unfortunately could be more of the same for Espargaro in 2021 – but there might actually be a possibility this time around of changing that.
While he’s joined by Lorenzo Savadori (his fifth team-mate in five years) and looked very strong in testing (just like last year), it seems like there’s something a little extra under Aprilia’s belt this time out.
If Espargaro can deliver on that potential, then he’ll become an instant demigod in Aprilia’s Noale home. Rinse and repeat last year, and it doesn’t look good for the entire project’s future.
Lorenzo Savadori: Silence the critics, especially those inside his own team
It’s hard not to feel sorry for former Aprilia test rider Savadori.
Promoted to full-time racer only after a whole host of others turned down the chance to ride for the team, he’s got to be well aware that he’s something of an unwanted stepchild.
There are even rumours, just days ahead of the opening race, of infighting within the team as some moved to replace him at the eleventh hour.
Unfortunately for him, there’s only going to be one way of ending that politicking: by going out on track and showing that he’s as deserving of his place on the grid as anyone else.
That means becoming a consistent points-scorer, no mean feat for someone whose MotoGP record is currently one 18th and two DNFs from three races.
