All teams are changing in MotoGP 2023

In the reorganization of the program of a Grand Prix, the pilots of the star category will go from having 20 races in 2022 to 42 in 2023, entering an unknown dimension with 22 pilots of 11 teams that will compete in the campaign, one team. and two pilots less than in 2022.

Suzuki’s farewell is already effective, leaving the championship with five brands: Ducati, Yamaha, Honda, Aprilia and KTM, which, although it puts the Gas Gas brand in contention, will score points in the championship of constructors for KTM. Yamaha has lost its RNF satellite team, joining the ranks of Aprilia, which in the campaign where the concessions have been lost will put four motorcycles on the grid.

Only four teams kept their lineup from last year: Monster Energy Yamaha with Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli, Aprilia Racing with Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales, Prima Pramac Ducati with Jorge Martín and Johann Zarco and Mooney VR46 Ducati Luca Marini and Marco Bezzecchi.

Nine riders change teams and eight of them also change brands, counting in this chapter the only rookie in the category, Moto2 champion Augusto Fernández. At Ducati Lenovo, the champion Pecco Bagnaia receives a new partner, his compatriot Enea Bastianini, the great revelation of 2022 with his four wins and his third in the championship, leaving the satellite team of Ducati, the Gresini Racing.

Suzuki’s fear left Joan Mir and Alex Rins without a team, switching to Honda, the first to Repsol Honda with Marc Márquez and the second to LCR Honda as a teammate with Taka Nakagami. Alex Márquez, Honda since he jumped to MotoGP in 2020, embraced the winning Ducati motorcycle despite having a contract with the Gresini Racing team from which Bastianini hails.

Former KTM riders Miguel Oliveira and Raúl Fernández have joined Aprilia’s new satellite team, the RNF Team. Oliveira’s place at the Red Bull KTM Factory will be taken by Jack Miller who, with previous MotoGP wins with Honda and Ducati, will now try to do so with KTM. In the same dilemma is Maverick Viñales who after winning with Suzuki and Yamaha now wants to do it with Aprilia.

The two riders of the ‘new’ GasGas Factory Racing Tech3 (it’s just a name change as their bikes are identical to the Factory team’s KTM) are Pol Espargaró, who after two years at Honda has returned to KTM and the team where he made his debut, the then Yamaha customer Tech3. His partner will be Augusto Fernández where everything will be new in the category.

Twelve head coaches have changed

The changes also affect the technical managers of the drivers, a pair that should be more united than before because there is one less free practice for the GP and another race. The constants are Marc Márquez (Santi Hernández), Fabio Quartararo (Diego Gubellini), Pecco Bagnaia (Cristian Gabarrini), Aleix Espargaró (Antonio Jiménez), Jorge Martín (Daniele Romagnoli), Marco Bezzecchi (Matteo Flamigni), Luca Marini (David Muñoz), Brad Binder (Andrés Madrid), Franco Morbidelli (Patrick Primmer) and Jack Miller, who brought Cristian Pupulin from Ducati to KTM. In Marc Márquez’s box there will be news of the arrival of a new telemetrician, Ricardo González, and a new Michelin technician.

Of the 12 new duos, some are reunions such as Maverick Viñales and Manu Cazeaux (together in their Suzuki days), Pol Espargaró and Paul Trevathan (in their first KTM experience), Raúl Fernández and Noè Herrera (in the Moto2 runner-up in 2021). or Johann Zarco and Massimo Branchini (they are two-time Moto2 champions). The remaining eight duos are rookies: Joan Mir and Giacomo Guidotti (Repsol Honda), Taka Nakagami and Klaus Nöhles (LCR Honda), Alex Rins and David García (LCR Honda), Enea Bastianini and Marco Rigamonti (Ducati Lenovo), Augusto Fernández and Alex Merhand (GasGas Tech3), Miguel Oliveira and Giovanni Mattarollo (RNF Aprilia), Fabio Di Giananntonio and Frankie Carchedi (Gresini) and Alex Márquez and Donatello Giovanotti (Gresini).