Who’s On The Path To MotoGP?

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 823, reporting January 21st, 2026. A show about the up and comers and to discuss the up and coming crowd in MotoGP is Richard Jowett.

Richard, are you staying warm in merry old England, sir? Yeah, wintertime here, particularly down in the southwest of England alternates between, let's say, chilly, not cold by your standards and then like it is at the moment, just ferociously wet and mild and windy. So we're in a wet, windy phase at the moment, so not very pleasant. I hate January and February. March is usually pretty poor here.

So I'm a spring summer person really, because you can get out on the bike and you've got the racings going on, etc. So this is just the time of year for me to get through really. So these shows help a little bit in lightening my mood. That's interesting because here we just had a very cold couple of days, single digit Fahrenheit numbers. And we are bracing for a snowstorm starting on Friday, rolling through the weekend as it passes by.

Depending on the shifts in the track, we can get anything from a coating to about six inches. But the problem is that some very, very bitter cold air, as in minus six Fahrenheit. The only thing I know about Fahrenheit and Celsius is that minus four is the exact same temperature. So that should give you a reference point of how cold it's going to be for a few days. So yeah, I'm not looking forward to that.

Things are hotting up though in the motorcycling and the racing world as it were. But before we get into any of that, let's say a big shout out and thank you to everybody who subscribes to this show. If you can donate, that'd be great. Just go to www.motopodcast.com. PayPal Patreon links on there.

If not, please visit us as a review wherever you get this podcast, because that would all help us out a lot. So with that, with the racing thing that's going on, Rich, I'll lead off here just because I have a thing for Dakar. And as we last talked, Ricky Braeback was second. So Ricky then went to the lead, was leading the rally, mainly because Daniel Sanderson broke a collarbone in his sternum and a crash in the dunes. Yet he carried on for another two days of riding.

I'm sorry, I'd be on the air medevac home as fast as possible. That guy just gets my award for large attachments. Ricky Braeback was leading by three minutes, 23 minutes, 28. I don't remember the exact number, but leading by over three minutes. Let's call it three and a half minutes over Luciano Benavides, who is the longer brother of the Benavides clan.

One stage left, 160 kilometers of racing to go and Benavides opens the stage Braeback's second or third. Ricky makes a navigational error, doesn't find a waypoint, corrects himself and charges on to the finish. The finish was so close that it took them several minutes to calculate who had won. And by two seconds, Ricky Braeback loses the Dakar rally to Luciano Benavides. Wow, that's going to sting.

Yes, by two seconds. To make matters worse, the review show, which you can find on Peacock, if you have Peacock here in the United States, you can watch it. They went back to the point where Ricky made the mistake in his navigation. He took a left on a road before he was supposed to. And what's interesting is that it's not that far.

They had marked out a hazard with brightly colored orange spray painted rocks and a big yellow sign with a black arrow pointing to the left, which is the direction they were supposed to go. Yet Ricky turned sooner than that and loses by two seconds. I don't know if I could sleep for days with that, but that's a stinger right there, for gosh sakes. I'm telling you. Yeah, wow.

So, yeah, I mean, Ricky was trying to get into rare error. There's very few people on motorcycles who's won three Dakars. So it's difficult. But wow, a whole year thinking about how you got beat by two seconds. Yeah.

A couple thousand kilometers, roughly of competitive stage like, wow. Oh, the other thing I got is the supercross update as it's in full swing here in the U.S. and I'm enjoying watching the racing on Saturday evenings or more like Sunday mornings for me because it's too late because they're out in California. But we talked about Justin Barsha having a very terrible accident where he basically got landed on by another motorcycle. He is back.

He was racing. He's really battered, really bruised, but he credits the Alpine Star Air Bag that they're starting to use in supercross. This was mandatory and Dakar. So he credit that with saving a lot of his injuries and reducing them down to bare minimum. It's just cool to see this new tech happening and becoming part of the equipment that everybody is going to have.

And we've seen it with the air suits and Moto GP for years now. What I think it was 2002, roughly, when Dainese created the first air suit with an air bag in it for the racers. So it finally has now made its way into Raleigh and also now making its way into supercross, which is good to see that that technology is going places. Yeah. So now, Automoto GP and the bike stuff is the reason that we're here.

A little news. It is launch season full swing. Who was first out of the gate, Rich? It wasn't LCR, I don't think. I don't really take an awful lot of notice of this stuff because, and everybody says the bikes that they unveil are not really the bikes that will be out on track in a few weeks time, because obviously they don't want to give any secrets away any sooner than they absolutely have to.

I'm sure it's OK if you're there in person in that sort of rarefied company. But to watch it on a video stream and stuff is pretty tough going, I think. So I've kind of seen a few of the photos because I'm interested in the sort of deliveries, although we had Monster Yamaha today and it looks exactly the same as it did last year and the year before that. And the year before that. There's been a few changes.

So Jucati's had a little bit of a centenary update, I think, to its color scheme. A little more white in there. A little bit more white down the side. Yeah. Other than that, no, I haven't really sort of taken too much notice.

Other than the fact that I saw the trackhouse photos today and they were running, or it sounds as if they're going to be running dual liveries. So one with the blue trackhouse that we saw quite a bit last year. But Ayagura's was fully in the golf color scheme, so they have two completely different liveries on the bike. So if you go onto the MotoGP website news section, you'll get a look. And they do look pretty cool, to be honest.

So whether they'll run the bikes with different liveries at the same around, I've got the impression that's the plan. I mean, obviously we've been used to LCR, haven't we? Lucchio, Cecchianello running different sponsors at different events. Yeah. The active expediency, I suppose, around sponsorship and getting money where he needs it in the right place in terms of sponsor exposure.

So perhaps that's part of what trackhouse is doing. But the golf bike looks really, really, really nice. That's tasty. I looked at that and thought, oh, Jim's going to start salivating when he sees that. Yeah, I am salivating.

It's just it's an iconic part of what was that 70. I mean, I wasn't even alive at that point when that actually happened. But it's just attached to some really iconic. I mean, that car is just some 917 Porsche for those who are not following along in the playbook because I jump around a lot. It's just iconic.

It's an iconic car because of what it was. But it's also iconic because it got immortalized in Steve McQueen's epic movie, Le Mans, so that looks really good. I do like the American flag on the bottom of Raoul's bike with the American flag. I like that. Hey, I'm American 100 percent.

So I'm going to like anything that's got a flag waving on it. You know, it's just my thing or so. Hmm. Interesting. All that.

I love the fact that golf is there. That helps a whole lot. It's really cool that they are sponsored by them or whatever. Let's see. Is there anything else to say about launches, Rich?

Well, only the the bit that I did tap into a little bit. And it's been discussed a bit on some of the other podcasts. It's true. But Rivela, who's the team boss at Aprilia, kind of making it known that both Bazzacchi and Jorge Martina kind of getting big money offers on the table. So he's kind of amping up the contract talk.

And we know this is a big year with so many riders out of contract at the end of twenty twenty six. Yeah. Some talk about Bagnar perhaps heading over there to join his mate Bazzacchi. Possibly. A lot of people kind of think that the across the deal is done in terms of the works Ducati squad, but then Bagnar might have a storming year.

I mean, it's obviously this is all speculation. But Rivela kind of making his feelings plain that he wants to get ink on paper sooner rather than later. I would imagine particularly with Bazzacchi, he might be a little bit more ambivalent about what happens to Jorge Martina, I suppose. But again, who's to say Martina won't come out of the gates far and, you know, and winning races? So who's to say?

But that's the only thing I've kind of really picked up. Otherwise, it's the usual sort of drudgery of. Yeah, I don't want to say anything rude because it's hard to make a launch event really, really exciting, I think, and they do sort of go on too long. There's lots of Bagnar questions that the riders look uncomfortable answering most of the time, so the bikes aren't even the bikes we're going to see. So I find it all a bit pointless, to be honest.

Yeah, I see that. I mean, that's true. It's just the era of bold new graphics, which is essentially what you get. Yeah. I mean, really, the only difference is the Yamaha visually because it's a V4 instead of the inline.

So if you paying attention, it does look narrower. So shall see what that does. So shall we go on to why we're here? The up and comers. Well, there was just a couple of very quick things.

I was just going to mention on board Superbike, given that we want to just try and give that a bit of attention this year. So we were talking about Chandra having, you know, sort of landed on his feet. I haven't been turfed out of MotoGP. Well, unfortunately, he's just landed on his arms because he had a big crash in Sepang, bust both of his arms, one particularly badly fractured right forearm. So he's fully cast up now.

Looks almost certain to miss the beginning of the season, which is only a few weeks away. I mean, that starts in Phillip Island on the 20th of February, which is just under a month from now. So that is not long to recover from a broken arm. And as I say, he's had some fairly serious damage on the other side as well. So that was one thing.

But that does mean that Ryan Vickers, who was turfed out of the Moto Corsa squad at the end of last year, in slightly dubious circumstances, it has to be said, but he's gone back to BSB. But in the official Honda team there, replacing Tommy Bridewell, I think he's a reserve rider for HRC. So it might well be the case that he's straight back into round one of World Superbike at the end of February, Ryan Vickers, which would be pretty cool to see. And then just very, very quickly, testing is underway, official testing for World Superbikes already in Haereth. Petrucci was fastest on the BMW today, which kind of got my attention.

And then I saw that they'd had a massive rainstorm there and it was pretty wet and not many people ventured out. And we know Petrucci is pretty good in the wet. So probably can't draw too much into that. But it's kind of nice to see that testing is starting to get going. World Superbikes will be going fairly shortly with MotoGP as well.

So, yeah, the season, as we said last time, it's not far away from us, is it? No, one other thing. Did you see Patterson's article on the race about Phillip Island? Yes. So that appears to be getting even more complicated at the moment.

It appears to. Yeah. I mean, for those of you who haven't read it, it's a questioning, even Dorna's motives inside of this, because he Simon reveals, paraphrasing here, of course, that even Carmelo wanted to take the bikes to Albert Park in Melbourne, like you want to talk about safety and then you want to go put them on a street circuit like, huh? What are you thinking? Because this is not Formula One.

You just simply can't really rock up, close off some streets and decide that you're going to go racing that isn't going to work by any stretch of the imagination. No. You know, and it seems like reading between the lines and reading some of the comments by people, I don't know that they know more about the situation than us, but they were commenting more on the Fox family is that they are not like the most. They're not as pure as the wind driven snow, apparently. And their whole motivation is just to get it back to the main part of the island on some flat surface and just have a race.

I mean, the island, it is special because it is the island. So, yeah, I understand there's no infrastructure there. And there's, you know, a couple hours to get back to Melbourne. But I mean, come on, guys. It's one of the best racetracks that you can possibly race on.

And I think almost every rider would label it as their favorite or at least in their top two. I mean, Mugello would take some. I mean, I think Italians probably see it as Mugello. But those are the two best bike racing tracks in the world, I think, bar none. And they're wanting to just really just ax it for the almighty dollar, which I get it.

You got to be able to do this, but just no, don't take, you know, like I get squirmish whenever they want to take spa off of the calendar for Formula One. It's like, no, it's one of the greatest race circuits ever. And you want to just throw it away because of something stupid. Well, it's always down to money. I have two thoughts, Joe.

I know we want to press on and not make this too long this show. But the hopeful cynic in me does wonder if there's a little bit of gamesmanship going on here. We know that getting into politics, that there's a new art in the town, which is to threaten something in the hopes of getting something that you actually want. So I do wonder whether there's a bit of bluff and bluster with this whole Albert Park thing to force the hand to get better garages, better facilities at Phillip Island, because it does look a bit like Thruxton on a rainy Sunday. I mean, I have to say, with all due respect to Thruxton, that's not a compliment.

So it clearly does need some money spending on it. And maybe this is the way to try to get them to do it, because I mean, Simon Patterson in that article that you referred to, Jim, pointed out that to turn Albert Park into a track that could get anywhere close to being acceptable for bikes would cost probably as much, if not more, than just putting some new bleeding garages in at Phillip Island. So that's point number one. And point number two, which I've said numerous times before, but I'll just repeat it because I think it's pertinent. Why hold the MotoGP race at the time of year when they do and the weather is terrible?

You're bound to get a lower crowd. You know, we've got World SuperZone a couple of weeks or three or four weeks time, and they'll probably have quite nice late summer weather there. So I just don't understand why they don't kind of, if they have to back to back the World SuperZone or run them both on the same weekend or do something, I don't know, on consecutive weekends. Because if you're going to go all that way, you might as well stay there for a little while and make the most of it. So I'm sure there are some better things that they could do to help get the gate up.

Because this is a money thing. Everybody understands that. And if they need to generate more money, well, I'm sure there are ways that they could do it. I think they need to reorg the schedule a little bit, in my opinion. You could start like, say, pick your poise in Thailand, Buriram, something like that with a race, say mid to late February, right?

Then you could have World Supers in that same vein, but they're in Australia. You could have MotoGP jump down to, say, Sepang and be there and then have that like the first part of March, then the second weekend of March or third weekend of March, you could be there and then you could put Kota back in at April, first of April kind of a thing, do something like that. We can talk about all that when we do a Liberty show. Again, the extreme cynic in me wonders whether or not they've kind of hung it out to dry a little bit by keeping it where it is on the calendar to force this issue. Probably.

The kind of Bernie Ecclestone kind of tactics like he used to do annually with Silverstone over things there. That's just me being an old commudgeon and thinking bad of people. But I've never understood why they put MotoGP at the end of the year when it is, because it just makes no sense to me whatsoever. And then they moan at the gates down. So, well, yeah, nobody wants to sit and freeze their ass off in the driving rain.

You can't blame people. Right. You could reorganize it to somewhere where it's like you get done in early September at Mizano, right. And instead of going to Japan or whatever, go to Australia first. And then you could go back to Japan or whatever.

You just said we're starting off at Thailand. So why couldn't you go straight on to Philip Island? I agree. I don't know. Unless there's some reason.

I don't know that the track just can't possibly do it. But I doubt that that's the case. So there's something bigger going on behind the scenes and hopefully this will get resolved in the sense that we end up staying put where we are, which is what everybody wants. Yeah. All right.

Let's get to why we're here. The up and coming. So we had talked about who we thought were the best riders in MotoGP. And we thought, let's do something a little different. Let's pick the riders that we think are the up and coming, the ones that are going to be the ones to watch and the ones who may eventually get to MotoGP.

So with that, we decided on roughly 10 riders to come out of there because it's kind of hard to judge all the kids because it's their first year in Moto3. Some of the teams aren't as good as some of the other teams and the equipment's a little in different states and whatnot. So just looking at the people who are talented and whatnot. I thought what we do is, Rich, why don't you start? You take one guy off your list and I'll see if I have him on my list.

And then we'll sort of compare our way up to we get back to what you may call number one if you want. And we will go that way. So why don't you start, Rich? Give me your rider and tell me why he's your up and comer. I'm going to run down my list 10 to one as we go along, I think, just because I've kind of structured it in that way.

I'll do the same. It's worth just pointing out a couple of rules of engagement here. There is a lot of new riders into Moto3 this year. So there's a lot of names that I don't recognize. And I haven't researched all of them in terms of their pre Moto3 careers.

So there might be a few that we're missing off the list here. But my criteria has been really to try and look at riders who kind of burst onto the scene and caught the attention more or less straight away with speed or obvious explosive talent. So I suspect our top fives as we have them down would be pretty similar. Might be. Yeah.

My sort of back end five would change on a day by day basis, probably. But I'm going to throw Valentin Peron at you from Argentina. OK. Have you got him on your list? No, I do not.

OK, I did not put that in there because I may have thought of this assignment slightly differently than you, because I looked at the people who were in Moto3 this year and said, hey, we know some of these guys are going up to Moto2, but I consider them Moto3 riders and picked it that way. So I didn't necessarily look at all the new kids that were coming in because I didn't know a way to actually judge them. So Peron was in Moto3 last year. So I've only taken from the people that I know from last year. We've been around for a few years.

I did not have him there. I've done a fair bit of research on these guys, which is why I was what's up in your I was having a real hard time getting this list brought up. I spent hours on this, which I really shouldn't have done. But he was third in the 2024 Red Bull rookies, as well as being fifth in the European Talent Cup. Fast, but inconsistent last year in Moto3.

But he did have a podium in Assen and a fourth in Matei. And so the talent is clearly there, but the speed is clearly there. And that's what I'm looking for in terms of who I'm selecting as the people that I think are highly likely to get to MotoGP one day. That's kind of what we're aiming at, I think. Yeah.

That's right. Yep. All right. Well, I did not have Peroni on my list. OK, my first one, I have Joel Calso, the who I do not have on my list.

This is what makes it fun because there's totally different perspective. And it was just good. This is the whole point of this. Right. So he thinks it's like for me, Joel seems to be capable rider.

He has bits where it's good. Right. And he had a couple of polls this year. He had some podiums. He had a little string going.

But it's inconsistent, it's wildly up and down. And I think that the biggest part of it is equipment. He's also one of the bigger lads. He's he's stocky. And I think that that hurts him trying to get tucked in.

I mean, he's now gone and was announced way early. He's going to MLAV, right? So he's going to Michael Latter-D's team, which, you know, I don't know enough about the team to know how well it's funded or may or may not be funded. But it isn't one of what we think of as the powerhouse teams that are there. That's fair.

Maybe because Joel can't bring enough money to a team. But as far as just talent, when he's on his day, it seems like it's right there. But there's just the lack of consistency of being at the front week in, week out. That's holding him back. And I'm hoping that he can sort of make this sort of his last year in Moto three and kind of move up to Moto two, because I think he might do better on a bigger bike.

Yeah, I'm glad you qualified him being one of the bigger lads and made the point that he's stocky, because he's extremely short and I nearly tripped over him when I met him. Oh, yeah. I mean, I tower over him. Yeah, I'm five, seven on a good day. It's like, jeez, I'm a whole head above you, bud.

It's like, wow, very, very short guy. Built, though. I mean, he's just all muscle and he looks like a boxer. Yes. He does look like a lightweight boxer.

But I mean, I've got a number of people who may or may not quickly run through later on people that have been in the category that they're in and haven't won or haven't won much or they've been there for quite some time. So I think kind of for me, Joel fits into that category. The ship set sail pretty quickly in Moto three as well as Moto two, doesn't it? Because there's just so much talent coming through every year. And you get stuck if you're not careful.

Case in point, I mean, like Dennis Foggier. Yes. Who's now vanished, I think, from the series, having gone back on the Aspire bike last year after an unsuccessful stint in Moto two. And I think that's him done. I mean, he's obviously won a lot of races or quite a few races.

And was very talented. But that's just not enough in the onslaught of predominantly Spanish talent that's coming through all the time. Yep. So, OK, next one for me then. Are we moving on?

Yeah. So my number nine is Guido Pini. Oh, not on my list. OK. A young Italian, which is a nice change.

Yeah. I'll just read through my notes. So very fast, but crash prone so far in terms of Moto three last year. He was a junior GP runner up in 2024, despite the fact that he missed half the season through injury. And he still was runner up in that junior championship, which explains how he ended up in the intact GP, Peter Oertel's team.

You know, so he came in with high credentials. It's true. And moves over this season to replace Almanza in the Leopard squad. So, again, that's a kind of ringing endorsement of his talent by people that will have been watching him coming up from, you know, when he was going around on mini bikes and stuff at the age of four, which is what they tend to do, isn't it? I mean, clearly he needs a solid 2026, but there's a lot of raw speed then that just needs to turn into consistent kind of top 10 finishes this year and hopefully a smattering of podiums in there and a few less crashes.

So that would be my rationale for Guido Pini. Yeah, I like that. For me, I had David Mignos. I thought his season was quite... Did you have him anywhere?

I have him on my list. Yes. OK. So for me, I thought he had a great season. He's shown aggressiveness.

He won a race, but he's always elbows out, always has that aggression, always trying, and he's just got the bit between his teeth. And it doesn't matter who you are, he is going to attack. And if he can just dial the aggression back just a smidge, just a smidge. You know, I'd rather try to make a fast guy go a little slower than try to make a slow guy go faster. And I do think that he's got a real shot at the championship in Moto3 this coming year, but he's up against some stiff competition.

But yes, I do think he's one to watch. Yeah. So I had him on seventh place on my list. So close. So he's been in Moto3 since 2022.

And it feels like a lot longer to me. He feels like one of the guys that's been around for quite a long time. What else did I write here? I mean, he's memorable for his, let's charitably call it all action style. And he would not have made it onto my top 10 list were it not for the second half of last season, when I think at long last, the very positive influence of Peter Oetel again, who's a very experienced team owner, team manager, kind of got into his head and persuaded him that it wasn't necessarily a great idea to be smashing into people on the first lap.

And then we started to see the speed turning into results. Because if you look at the second half of his season, it's really, really good. Up until the point when obviously, I mean, ironically, faultlessly got taken out and broke his leg, I think, didn't he, at Mandelica? Yeah. So that kind of curtailed his season.

But certainly he's staying in the same team. So he's got Peter Oetel in his corner. If he can continue on that kind of fast, consistent form, then like you say, Jim, he's definitely one of the people that you'd have as a title. There are so many title favorites in Moto3. Sure.

We're going to be saying every other word, but he's definitely in that group of, let's call it, five to 10 riders who you wouldn't be surprised if they lifted the championship at the end of this season. Gotcha. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised at all. My turn, I think, right?

Yep. So I have Colin Vier next in my list. Me too. OK, do I? Hang on.

No, I don't. No, you don't. He was on my backup list. Really? OK.

All right. So he won races in Moto3, but you could tell he was obviously just too big to the bike. The kid was just physically too tall for the little bikes, although he did somehow figure out how to tuck himself in there or whatever. He had a disappointing season having moved to Moto2, but he found form at like the last couple of races. I believe in his talent and I think his bigger problem was he worked so hard at trying to have low body mass to be able to work on the Moto3 bike that he just hasn't gotten enough mass to be able to work what needs to be done on the Moto2 bike, but I do think he's extremely talented.

I do think that he will probably win a race or two maybe this year in Moto2. But he's one of the ones that's sort of like he's in that cusp, right? It's like, I'm not really sure. Like he could have a breakout and like, wow, that's going to be great. Or he could just kind of wither in Moto2 and be like an Aaron Kinnett, someone who just never went any farther than that or an Albert Aranis kind of a deal.

So he's like on my bubble there. But, you know, yeah, I mean, he's not on my list, but he's on my backup list. I mean, I was always astonished how good he was on the Moto3 bike. As you say, Jim, it's his height. Really, there was the issue and just getting his limbs tucked in was presumably a challenge.

I mean, you're right. His kind of body mass index must have been is unbelievable. I mean, it looks like he'd topple over in a light breeze. I really genuinely thought that it would be him and Alonso that really broke through of the four kind of main rookies, whereas his obviously Holgardo that kind of shone almost the brightest. In fact, I think he probably did shine the brightest really in terms of pure results.

But like you, I expected Vi to go a little bit better. But the good news was that he did have a very strong last two to three rounds because he's not in the Red Bull I.O. squad by accident. He's there because they rate him highly and as they should. So I'm expecting quite a bit from Colin Viya this season, even though I couldn't quite put him into my top 10, because I'm not quite convinced enough yet.

Agreed. Hit me with another one, Rich. OK, so this is actually my eighth spot, so I've got Angel Picaras. Oh, I have Picaras on my list. That's the first time that we actually get there.

So where do we start with him? I mean, 20, 23 double titles in Juno GP and Red Bull. So that's why he came into Moto3 with so much fanfare. Leopard in 2024, if you remember. So you had a sort of an up and down debut season.

You had that very memorable win from the back of the grid in San Marino, which kind of made everybody signed up and think, oh, blimey, maybe he is that good. But, you know, just didn't have a particularly great final season on the MT Helmets MSI squad. So although he did win four races, I think my question really was, is he going to be able to get into the Moto3 with him, which is why he's only eight for my list, because I really feel as if he should be a bit higher up. But the question is, will he adapt to the Moto2 bike or will he fade away, having come off the back of a bit of a disappointing season? So that's kind of where I see him at the minute.

But he's one that could just make that transition quickly, as a couple of the other rookies did last year. Yeah, he's on my backup list. He's like my first alternate, if you will. OK, the reason I put him there was he came in with such great aplomb. He had the credentials, right?

He's fighting for layup hard, right? He wins that race in San Marino from basically dead last to the last lap and wins it in grand style. And then I'll just put it this way, pissing moaned about being on a Honda, decided he had to be on a KTM, worked his way out of a contract, got onto a KTM and subsequently did nothing. I mean, yes, I know there was a few races that had been won in his defense, right? But he was overshadowed by Alonso at the time because they were both in Moto3 at that same time.

Alonso made him look silly to me. But it's one of those things where I keep in the back of my mind. It was sort of like why he's on that alternate list. There was a guy named Fabio Quattrarro, who was supposed to be like the next coming of something, who was tearing up the CV, winning everything that he could. He got to Moto3, didn't do well, had a few podiums, I think, and maybe a win in Moto3, essentially lost his ride and found a way onto a Moto2 bike.

He was not on a good bike. No, he was on the speed up, I think. Speed up. Yeah. Or Boscacorra, whatever they call it now.

Right. And that bike only worked in certain places. But he made that bike look fantastic at Barcelona. Wins that race, winds up getting a Tech 3 ride at Yamaha. And the rest is history.

Picaris could do the same thing. We don't know. So I kind of put him there for that. But it's like after his last season in Moto3, it's like, I'm not so sure because it was either really good or it was like really poor. There was no middle ground.

And you could argue that Quattroraio was in the middle ground. He was in or around the podium all the time. But we see Picaris be like fighting for a podium or he's running 15th and going to take one point out of the championship. So, yeah. Yeah.

Jim, before we get angry emails coming in, Quattroraio went to the R&F Yamaha squad, the Patronus Yamaha squad, not Tech 3. OK, thank you. Because I just assumed Tech 3 in Yamaha for some reason. Yeah, no, that was Raslan, Rasli's team, if you remember. That's right.

That was the Patronus Yamaha. That right it was. Yeah, you're pretty sure I'm right on that one. No, you're right. I'm very wrong about that.

Picaris, the worry for me and the reason why I've only got to make and you didn't even have it on your list is that kind of up and down thing. And the fact that the little red flag start going up when you hear the stories about his sort of attitude and grumpiness and demeanor and a bit of an entourage, which you love that word entourage, a bit troublesome. Well, because these guys come along and, you know, it's like the line out of Top Gun. You know, you go right in check. You just can't cash all words to that effect.

It smells a wee bit of that. Maybe a couple of relatively poor seasons might have just taken the rough edges off that a little bit and means that he'll knuckle down and just get on with it. In Moto 2 this year. Interested to see how he does. Who's next?

Your turn. I think I might be one behind you. So, OK, go ahead. Let me throw a left winger at you. So I've got in my number six spot, probably going to butcher some of these names, Brian Uriarte.

Ah, Uriarte. Yeah. OK. Another Spaniard. Now, this season, again, worth pointing out, he's on the Red Bull KTM IO bike.

So, again, he's landed himself a top ride. So he only had four races in Moto 3 last year. So he did two rides with Intac GP and then two with the KTM IO squad. The question is why? Well, in 2023, he was third in the European Talent Cup.

In 2024, he was second in Red Bull Rookies. And then in 2025, so last year, he was first in both Juno GP and first in Red Bull Rookies. So that's why he picked up the four rides right at the end of the season when he'd won those other two championships. This is a kid that's coming in with a lot of expectation and talent. It's no surprise that Red Bull KTM IO have snapped him up.

Now, who's to say he doesn't have a struggle in first season, but I suspect he'll be one of the front runners. OK, so in that spot, I have Jose Antonio Rueda, your world champion for Moto 3. Now, I have him here because he had a gangbusters start to the season and his nemesis wasn't old enough to start racing at the same time he was. And along with that, his nemesis crashed and put himself out for a couple more races that he couldn't do. Right.

Then Rueda had a very weird sort of time before the summer break. Right. He really couldn't put anything together. It was like, what happened to this kid that was on fire and basically winning almost everything? If you think back to like the beginning of the year podcast at 25, you and I didn't even have Rueda on the map for winning a Moto 3 title.

Yet he did, which is great. Talented kid. No question about it. But he did have that lull. And that lull was pretty long until he got back to Austria after the summer break.

And then things sort of picked back up again. He was like sort of right at the ship, if you will, and rode it in. He had got to the point where he was world champion and he had locked it up early, so to speak. But then there is that troubling incident at Sepang to which I'm not saying he did anything wrong, but it's just one of those things where you're going. Are you mentally in the game or are you not in the game?

Thank God everybody was OK on that one. I'm not beating him up because of it because it was an accident. But it's one of those things you stop and you think maybe it could have not been an accident. So where is his mental state sometime? Like, is that the same sort of mental lapse that he had where he had a really rough string of four or five races there before we got to the summer break?

So it's a question mark for me. See, I haven't got him on my list. OK, he's kind of in 11th place. He's kind of at the top of my back pack. Yeah, it was great achievement.

I mean, he rode brilliantly through most of last year with the kind of the weird Sepang incident aside. And this is going to sound like I'm being really tough on the guy. And I don't mean it in this way, but he kind of didn't really have a representative year prior to that, because he got himself injured. Again, he came in like with all the expectation in the world and it just never happened. And then last year, I can't help but feel there was a big clear out of all the top guys from Moto3 the previous year.

So Alonso went, Hulgado went, Vaya went. You know, there was a lot of the front runners in Moto3 were not there in 2025. Now, I'm not saying that made Ray does championship less because he won the championship fair and square. But for me, I'm just not like massively, massively convinced enough yet. And I can just see him having a bit of a long adaptation on the Moto2 bike.

I hope I'm wrong. I really do. But it just strikes me as what am I trying to say? He's like Manu Gonzalez. He's pretty fast and unspectacular.

And I'm just not sure that's the ingredient, the magic mix and recipe that you need to get all the way to MotoGP as in rapidly, which is really what you need to do in this game. You need to get there as quickly as possible. Yeah. So that's why he didn't quite make my list. But that's a pretty tough judgment for me, that one, because I kind of really should have him in there, I suppose, as Moto3 champion.

That's understandable. Is it my go again? Or is it your go? I don't know. I lost.

I should have been writing this down. As a host, I suck. OK, so number five then on my list. This is where I'm getting properly serious, I suppose. I've got Alvaro Carpe.

Carpe. I do not have that name on my list. OK, I'll give you my rationale then. So he's another person on a Red Bull KTMI bike. I mean, it's quite a few of them.

That's all you need. If you got Aki in your corner, you're good, right? I mean, you just have to look at the past record on some of these kids and you just look at this thing. How the hell have they achieved this much? So young and age.

So I've got Protégé written against his name because 2024 Junior GP World Champion, as well as Red Bull Rookies champion in that same season, 2024. Hence why he got the Red Bull KTMI in the first place. And if you remember, he was second first time out in Thailand last year behind Rueda, so they had a 1-2 and then a further four podiums on his way to an eventual fourth place championship. But that kind of felt like a bit of a disappointment, which, again, tells me that finishing fourth in your rookie season and it's a disappointment. It tells you how much talent he's got.

So he stays with IO again and for me, definitely in the top three title favorites for this season. Yeah. Oh, so I guess that gives me my turn, right? Yeah. So for me, I have I'll get hate mail for this one.

Diego Marrera, the Moto 2 World Champion, who has a three year contract at Honda. Oh, he's already in Moto GP. So you're cheating. Yeah. Somebody up and coming, right?

Because it's just going to be his rookie year, right? True. Yeah. I mean, how do you think he's going to do on an LCR Honda? Well, it's not so much that that is there, but I was looking at what he did in Moto 2, right?

He beats Gonzalez, but Gonzalez doesn't even make my list. So, you know, I took him because he got to Moto GP, which it might be his passport. That helped. Right. I'm not trying to take anything away from what he did.

Right. But if you look at his beginning of his year, it was pretty brutal. And I can't figure out which way it is. Is it that just Gonzalez collapsed so bad or did Marrera just win enough during the collapse to be good? I think it was both of those things combined, actually.

Fair. Right. So I don't know which way to put it. You know, and I also kind of laid it out this way, too, is we know Gonzalez had a test on a Moto GP bike, we know Marrera did too during the season. And he didn't.

Oh, that's right. No, he didn't. He turned it down. That's right. He was offered it and he did.

Sorry. You're right. Thank you. But the question then is, is like, what did LCR and the people there in Honda see that they wanted that over Gonzalez? Because at the time when the test happened and Gonzalez was still well and good, but after the test, things sort of really went off the rails.

Yeah, absolutely. You can't deny the fact that things went south immediately because Gonzalez tested the Aprilia, didn't he? I believe. Yeah. Was it for Trackhouse?

I think it was for Trackhouse. Yeah. Whereas Marrera's camp turned that opportunity down because they didn't want to distract him. Right. And you do wonder whether or not that was a grave error on the part of Gonzalez's entourage, there's that word again, or management team, because it did kind of feel like you get given the keys to the candy store and then you find out it's the wrong key.

You can't actually get in. The one thing for me from Marrero, why I put it there, is I think there's potential. It's a learning year. And let's see what happens when everybody resets in twenty seven. Right.

So he's got a year to sort of learn. It's kind of like top rack coming in. Right. Yeah. He gets a year to think about it, a chance to ride.

He's got a three year contract. So his contracts are made to be broken, but he's technically safe. But there's a something to him. There's a level of coolness. Yeah.

Yeah. There's an X factor to him that I can't put my finger on. But I understand why they took him. I just want to sort of explain that to everyone who's listening, because I think you could easily just sort of brush that championship off that he won. Again, you could easily brush off, well, he's got a Brazilian passport and we're going back to South America.

Well, we're not going to go to Brazil, people. I hate to tell you this. That track's not ready. I guarantee you that it's not going to be on this. We are not going to Brazil.

We might go next year. But it's like one of those things like something about how he rides and his under pressure coolness that doesn't really seem to faze him that I like. And I think he's just has that X factor or the it factor, whatever you want to call it. And I think that given a couple of years, right, he might be a guy battling with the new cream of the crop. The next group of great riders, the Acostas, like Alonzo Helgardo, those guys, and he may be in that mix with them.

But a year wiser because he's got another couple of years on the bikes and more experience. Yeah. I mean, he takes lots of boxes. He's kind of got that X factor look about him. He's very good on social media.

I think he's a really, really accomplished motocross rider, which might explain something about his fun to watch on the bike. Maybe. OK, he's got the passport, which is, I guess, helpful given the context. But most crucially of all, he won the championship. So there's no reason for him not to be there.

He's absolutely there on merit. He's not on my list because he's already in MotoGP. So I excluded him on that very basis. But I understand your reasoning. And so I'll just as an honorary one, I'll put Toprak in there as well.

Yeah, you can. For similar reasons, because I think he might turn a few heads this year. All right. So top four now. Have you still got four to go?

I think we got four to go. Yeah. Number four for me is Senna Aegius. Wow. OK.

Liqui Moly, Dynavolt Intac GP rider stays with the team again in MotoGP this year. So again, I'm just looking at his past record, one to twenty twenty three Moto2 European Championship. Another rider is highly rated by Peter Ertl, which is important. Breakthrough performances last year, though, if you remember, one in Silverstone. Brilliant.

Coming out of the last turn, win across the line. And he also had that memorable home win at Philip Island as well, which has got to be the highlight of his career to date, I would imagine. So if he can take the Moto2 title in twenty twenty six and he's definitely one of the front runners, otherwise I wouldn't have him fourth on my list. He would be a perfect candidate and nationality to head up to the eight fifties in twenty twenty seven, particularly with the likelihood that Jack Miller might be exiting around about that point. And it's important that Aussies have somebody to wave the flag for.

For that reason, mainly down to his performances, though, I mean, he was good the previous year when he first rocked up full time in the championship. And I thought he was really, really good last year with T wins to prove the point. Yeah, I had Aegis there as well. I'm high on Aegis. I like his style.

I like how he rides. Again, it's that Aussie grit thing that I Americans tend to like, right? We're just sort of geared the same way they are. He had some great rides. The ride at Philip Island in front of his home crowd under the pressure.

Right. So to do well, right, because the day it started off with Kelso on pole, I think Kelso was on the podium somewhere. I don't remember where. I think so. He's definitely on pole.

He's definitely on podium. Yet the win from Aegis or whatever, because actually Aegis started off the day because then they run Moto3 last because of the schedule. It doesn't matter. Possibly or maybe Moto2 is lost. It's worth pointing out, actually, Aegis won that race by like 10 seconds as well.

He absolutely creamed everybody. Yes. And I don't buy this home advantage thing. He only goes there once a year like everybody else does. So that was a spectacular ride.

And there's been other rides that I think that he's had that were spectacular, that were like at the podium level or near the podium. And you're like, wow, he came from a bit back. He really managed his tire. He rode well. You know, he had to fix a few things like qualifying.

He's worked on that. And for me, there's just a steady improvement of what he's done year over year over year. He's on a very good team. They're one of the better Moto2 teams. I kind of feel it inside.

It's a gut feeling for him that he's just going to have like this breakout season, win a few more races and really put his name on the list of everyone in MotoGP. Hey, we need somebody else who put Aegis on there. Yeah. Well, I would imagine that he's already exciting some interest in terms of agreements with the eight fifties in mind anyway, because that kind of resets everything for everybody, doesn't it? Oh, yeah.

Tires are going to be Pirellis. Kind of less of a risk to take a rookie at that stage anyway. So if he has a strong 2026, which I'm imagining he is going to, provided he doesn't get injured or something, then, yeah, I could certainly see him getting it. And physically, he's one of the bigger riders as well. So he probably would be quite well suited on a MotoGP bike as well by that stage as well.

Yeah, he's got a lot of things in his favor. Yeah. I think anybody in 27, I think any team that looks for anybody who has experience with Pirelli, you know, that's a commodity. Yes. Because the problem is you have two big shakeups.

You have a whole new capacity rule and you get a completely different tire. I don't think Pirelli and Michelin could be any more opposite of each other in their philosophy of what they think is correct for making a motorcycle tire go fast. Yeah, I think this 26 season, I don't want to say MotoGP isn't going to be fun to watch. That's not the case. But it's just there's going to be so much more intrigue trying to figure things out that the pecking order is going to be completely reset.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. So that puts us down to what top three, Rich? Yeah. And I'm pretty sure we've got the same three riders in. I think the question is, what order do we have them in?

Do you want me to continue to go first? Or do you want to take over? Yeah, fine. Yeah. All right.

So I really well, I really struggled with three and two positionally wise. Number one was pretty clear for me right from the get go. I'm really interested in which way these are now. So number three, I've got Danny Holgardo. Wow.

I have a whole guard out there, too. That's I think we might actually be exactly the same. Yeah, I'd be surprised if we weren't. I mean, we don't really need to say a lot about the top three, because at this point, we're talking about people that everybody that listens to the show knows knows well. Well, I mean, he was good in Moto3, but I just wasn't expecting him to be as good as it.

Well, good is underplaying it as fantastic as he was in Moto2. Right, you know, straight from the get go pretty well. And that is not something you see very often. Now, you might remember that I kind of speculated about the fact that he is that kind of, again, that stocky, strong, not like ridiculously short, although he's not tall by any stretch of the imagination. So I've walked past him a couple of times, probably grown a little bit in those last couple of years since I saw him, but physically well adapted to the Moto2 bike quicker than some of the other rookies that came up.

So I think that probably helped him. But the point is that he maintained that performance pretty well all through the year. And he was taken out of several races as well. He had a couple of crashes, which were his own fault, of course, which is normal. Yeah, he was just outstanding.

And again, you've definitely got five people that at this point, you can't really say who would win the championship because there's at least five who have definitely got the opportunity and he is high in that five. I think what also impressed me about Horigato this year, he's rookie of the year in Moto2, right? Yeah. But what got me was his qualifying efforts. Like he would come out of that first qualifying session, then he would come to that second qualifying session and be on pole.

And there was this late lapse that he did where, well, you don't think anybody's going to knock Aegis off a pole or whatever. And Horigato would beat him by like three tenths. Like there was just this massive jump. He seemed to have the ability just to get everything out of a motorcycle. That was there.

Right. And that really impresses me. That shows that there's some level of understanding of your setup, of understanding where you can push, understanding the limit of what you can do, because you have to qualify well. You know, we say all the time, if you're not in the first two rows in MotoGP, you're probably not going to win. If you're not in the first three rows of Moto2, you're not going to win.

If you're not in the first four rows, you may not win Moto3. Moto3 is probably the one that you could be almost anywhere and win. We've seen enough people win from last place over the last few years. It's entirely possible. But when you get to that point, qualifying is so important.

And because one of the guys that's in this list that we haven't mentioned, really struggled at qualifying in Moto2. Right. So for him to come in like he did and sort of I felt like he dominated qualifying, especially in the second half of the year. I just think, man, he's going to be a tough one to beat. He is a legitimate title contender for a Moto2 title next year.

For sure. Yes. And the thing that struck me and what made him so stand out was that when you saw him on the Moto2 bike last season, you would have thought that he'd been in the category for two or three years. Yes. He did not look like a rookie.

And I'm pretty sure that there's some team managers in MotoGP up and down the pit lane sort of scratching their heads thinking, oh, Jesus, there's another one we got to find a place for. And there'll be a battle over. Because if he wins the Moto2 championship, then it's a nailed uncertainty that he'll be on an 850 and 27. For sure. He is that good.

Well, unless he has a catastrophic season this year and any of them could. But unlikely, I think, and particularly given that he stays on the Aspire, which is probably the best squad in the Moto2 pit lane, arguably. You got IO in there as well. IO or Aspire are probably legitimately the best Moto2 teams. The two key ones.

So I mean, he's on one of the plum seats. Yeah. So for sure. Did you have him third as well? Yes, I did.

Yes. OK, so have we got the same second place person? That's the question. All right. Pretty sure we have.

So for me, Maximo Quiles. Oh, I did not have Quiles second. Oh, you got him first, haven't you? OK. Yeah.

Oh, good. Well, I'm glad that we've been slightly different from each other like we were last time out. So to be clear, you're taking Quiles as two. Yeah, I have Alonso at two, which means you have Alonso at one. And I have Quiles as the top.

It sounds like an almighty cop out, but really, they're pretty much joint number one for me because they're in different categories, but they're very similar in terms of what they're doing on a bike. I'll go first in my reasoning. How about that, Rucin? Yeah, yeah, please. You go here.

My reasoning is this. It was very difficult to decide who was going on top. And Quiles was impeccable as a rookie, right? But as you've always said, they know that bike very well by the time they get there. So this really isn't such a surprise.

So he is that supreme talent that we have. And the other flip side was, well, the Marquez brothers have an interest in this kid. So you must be doing something very right to have Alex and Mark train with you, ride with you, teach you things. Be around you. And you are that good that you have those people in your corner.

Right. So that's kind of why I put Quiles at the top. If there's anybody in the list who has an X factor about them, he does. There's just something special about this kid. And you know it.

It's as blatant as Acosta Automoto 3 bike and probably as blatant as like Mark Marquez Automoto 2 bike. Right. That they exist in a world of, well, we talk about the aliens, right? Otherworldly. Otherworldly.

We talk about the aliens like we talk about Mark being an alien. We talk about Quattraro being an alien. Who is the next alien? And if I look at the list of people who are coming, I put Quiles right there. Dude, that kid's an alien and it's only going to be stronger.

I put Alonso in the two spot because he always was coming good late because he couldn't figure out how to switch the tires on and qualifying in Moto 2. And qualifying in Moto 2 is drastically important. Starting a lot of the races where Alonso did, he wasn't able to challenge for anything better than maybe a second or a third. And this is going to sound harsh, but I'm going to say it anyway. Alonso kind of lucked into the hungry race with his tires.

Right. It just happened to work and he chased everybody down when everybody else is kind of having problems with it. Now, the pass he put on to win was spectacular. And I'm not trying to take anything away from him, but I was looking at hair's difference between Alonso and Quiles as who's going in there in the top. And I had to look at it as like, you know, really, I can't find fault in what Quiles did all season long.

But you can kind of say that a fault, maybe a small point of kink in Alonso's armor is qualifying because he won a lot of Moto 3 races from not pole. But he was qualifying good enough to be in that front pack. Well, he wasn't qualifying good enough to be in the front pack all the time on a Moto 2 bike. He even admitted himself, I'm working on getting the bike better so that I can qualify better. So for that reason alone, I just simply slid him into the number two spot.

OK, so I run through my region and where I position those two riders and because I'm going to all the trouble of writing these notes, I'm going to read them, particularly for the top two. OK, so Quiles in second place for me, then. Again, it's just fascinating when you sort of Wikipedia these guys and look again what they've been up to in the past. So he finished his championship runner up in the 2020 Moto 4 Spanish Superbike Championship, by the way, at the age of 12. I mean, that gets your attention straight off the bat.

Then European Talent Cup champion in 2021 and 2023 and a top three finisher in Red Bull Rookies and Junior GP 2022 to 2024. I mean, this guy must have a room dedicated to trophies and what not. So he was up to Moto 3 with Aspyr in 2025 and completely put down his podger in the shade. Missed the first two rounds because of his age, as we pointed out several times before and still finished third overall. So, I mean, what can you say?

Where I perhaps just put him back a little bit into second place is I've got wild but extremely fast with great late race pace, which is rather reminiscent of Alonso. He did sort of knock into people a bit last year and he did fall off a few times when he probably didn't need to. So he just needs to sort of tame it down a little bit. But I'd like you I think he'll be in Moto GP pretty soon. I put oh and he's best buds with Marquez Bros.

Oh, and he's got a rocking bell helmet as well, which is not usually in Moto GP or in the Moto GP paddock. Bell's more associated with Formula One. And it's just a really cool lid that. And then for Alonso, I mean, I wrote down I see him as a generational talent in the same way that I think, you know, Marquez, Quattraro, Rossi obviously was. Yeah, Keeley's possibly the same as well, but perhaps we need a little bit more time to be absolutely sure about that.

That's fair. Oh, that's valid. I mean, if anybody is going to become the next core group of aliens, it's going to be Keeley's Alonso Acosta, then maybe out of your maybe. I'm not sure. Top RAC could just turn on and be like, yeah, I'm there.

But I mean, I think with the group that's coming up, Rich, there are a lot of people who are on Moto GP bikes right now who need to be looking at they could be getting to the end of their careers. I give you Vinalas as a possible. Like your career is probably coming to a close here, bud, because these kids are coming and they need a spot. You know, I think Miller is close to the sell by date, right? Morbidelli.

Morbidelli is definitely on the next train out of there. Right. So I don't think Zarko will be around for too long. Can't be around for much longer. Right.

Marine is likely to be forced into official test rider due to fairly soon. So there are a lot of bikes. Openers probably going to wind up being a world superbike rider. Well, yeah, you know, I just think so. Right.

I mean, you've got Acosta and if the bike's good and Acosta just keeps putting Bender to shade, no one's going to want damaged goods, so to speak. Right. This is a crucial year for Pindos. We said last night, I'm just really curious and interested to see how he gets on with Phil Maron as his crew chief this year, because that guy is really, really, really good. Just to finish off, John Alonso, I mean, it's just a roll call of European talent cups, junior GP, Red Bull Rookies.

I mean, the list just goes on and on and on again with him. I just want to sort of balance off something that you pointed out, which I think over the course of the Moto2 season was important. It definitely was early on. And that was the fact that he bust his shoulder up, if you remember, or did his collarbone in preseason. So he started from further behind than he should have done.

And I think that affected and afflicted him all year. And we don't know how long that injury lingered as well in terms of getting ultimate one lap pace out of the bike. So I think it's worth pointing that out. But obviously, you had that win in Hungary, as you said, and four other podiums. So, again, I would be utterly astonished if he's not in MotoGP in 2027, given the scale of the changes going on there and the relative lack of risk of taking a rookie again on the provisor and the caveat that he has a solid 2026.

Yeah. And yeah, there's clearly going to be quite a few current MotoGP riders who might be looking at drawing their pension a bit earlier than they thought was going to be the case. But, you know, some of them like the Vinalas is and what not, they've been around for an awfully long time and they're great, great riders. But the talent just has to keep coming through. So I'm sure that's going to be the case once the new regs hit in particular.

Yeah, for sure. Do you want to just run through any of this that you had done, but you couldn't justify getting them into your top 10 because I don't have really anyone else on the list that hadn't been mentioned. OK, because I just sort of capped it at the 10 and I had two extras. I really, you know, my extras were Aegis and Vicaris. But yeah, go through who else is on there.

Yeah. I'm going to quickly tell you. So the ones that are on my list that I came up with initially and I had to obviously whittle it down to 10. So these are ones that didn't make it that I thought might have gone in. So I had obviously we've spoken about Rueda, I had Ethan Guevara, ex Moto3 World Champion.

Yeah. And again, had a sort of glimmers of hope at the end of last season at long last in Moto2, which has taken far too long. Colin Vier, we spoke about. I kind of got a feeling about David Almanza, but I'm just not quite sure. There's not enough evidence yet.

Yeah, I agree. Marco Morelli is another sort of under the radar rider that if you look at his prior record is, again, lots of potential there. And I kind of took him up. But I mean, Sergio Garcia, you know, at one point, you know, he's running up in Moto3 and then he kind of should have won the championship in Moto2 a couple of seasons ago. And then I had that kind of Annis Horribilis last year and kind of almost disappeared completely.

He gets back again in Moto2 this year on the Grissini bike. So it's his second chance. But I think probably MotoGP shippers set sail for him. And then the ones that interestingly, you didn't come up with any of these names either, because there's a bunch of people that I'm going to go at Lambastod for here. But these were people that I was actually writing quite critical things about.

So without going into detail, I had Adrian Fernandez, Dennis Onsu, not so much Luca Lanetta, actually. I probably should have had him in my reserve list because I think he's got potential. That's one that once you said, hey, didn't you have anybody else? Sounds like what kind of limited the first one I thought about was Lunetta. And this is for a sad reason, just by the fact that he's not going to be on the Ciccorsa squad, Cicc 58 squad, Corsa ride, I think will help him tremendously.

Yeah. So I think if anybody's got a chance at like sort of having a breakout season, I think it might be Lunetta. The ones that might sting a little bit, Joe Roberts. Yeah, I kind of can't quite see how some of these people are still riding in Moto2. So I would include Aaron Connet in that comment.

Yeah, even lovely bloke, but Tony Arbolino. I mean, I think that days are numbered really in this paddock. Celestino Vietti, he's another one that's been around for a long time and just doesn't kind of put it together. And then if I'm being like really, really unkind, I also had Philip Salach. Yamanaki has been around for donkey's ages and even poor old Scott Ogden.

I just think the years are clicking by, I'm afraid. And time doesn't wait for these people. Ultimately, I mean, I would have had Jake Dixon on that list as well, but he's done the right thing and scalped off to World Superbike now to earn a bit of decent money late in his career. What do we think about Barry Bolton? I don't know.

I didn't even really consider him, which was weird because, of course, he had a pretty stellar year last year, but that was like, where did that suddenly appear from? Now, if he has another one, if we were doing this again in 12 months time, he probably would start to show up on our list, I suspect. Yeah, you need a bit more evidence. And he's been around for quite a few seasons and shown nothing like that before. Admittedly on lower level teams that we should be offensive.

He never came through the Moto3 farming system. He came from a European Moto2. I think that's possibly right. Bit like Aldegaard did, because Aldegaard came up through Moto2, Talent Cup or whatever it's called. Yeah, something like that.

I mean, he's another one I might put, you know, because we don't know. And again, it would be different if we were in the paddock, right? And we could have talks with people who are in the know and see what they think and what they say. And if you're living in there, you get the vibe about what people you can get a feel for how people think about writers and whoever. Right.

Yeah. We're on the outside kind of looking in, so we can only judge basically by results what they've done in the past, what little we see of them and their personalities. But what is their results? Right. And were they writing well or not?

Well, they qualify well or not well. So it's not a complete list by any means, but they're the people to look for. I think if everybody out there watches these guys, I think you're going to be rewarded with it. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it's obvious with David Alonso and Maximo Quiles, they're just always really, really good, unless they're carrying an injury or something and then you can't expect it.

So they're the people who just think they're definitely going to make it provided they don't get injured or have some sort of a meltdown or whatever. Two last comments before we go from me. And again, I might get sort of shot down a little bit for saying this, but there's way too many Spaniards on my list. You know, it's just crazy how many people are from Spain. I mean, you think, oh, sure.

I know there's a couple from Argentina and there's one from Colombia. Oh, I mean, that's all like pseudo Spanish as well. So I don't know how much GP solves this particular conundrum. America badly needs some riders in that in the USA. Britain certainly does.

And Australia. I mean, these are all big markets and it's so dominated by Spain and Italy. Still, it's not a concern because if it's exciting racing, it doesn't really matter, I suppose. But it is meant to be a world championship. For me, that means where they go and who's participating.

So that's something that just sort of jumps out at you. Because if I look down my top 10, it's Argentina, Italy, Spain, Spain, Spain, Spain, Australia, Spain, Spain, Spain. So that's that. The other thing was there was some riders I just couldn't put on the list because they've been around just for far too long and I haven't done enough to justify still being there. And that was the list I just read out with Fernandez and Roberts and Canet and whatnot.

I mean, Canet is almost certainly going to be a world super bike, I think, because he's miraculously got a Moto 2 ride with El Fidi. Yeah, this season. But of course, they're running a Ducati Panigale and super bike the same lows at the minute. And I suspect part of that deal involves him going across to the world super bike paddock at some point in the next year or two, because again, he's been around in that category far too long, taking up a seat that somebody else should be on. I think.

Yeah. How about an honorable mention for Casey O'Gorman? Yeah, I'd consider him. But again, we just haven't seen enough. There's not enough to know.

But what we have seen is very encouraging, isn't it? He may be on the list next year. I hope so. For all we know. I have a bit of a feeling that he could well be.

Yeah. And as you quite rightly corrected me, Jim, a few episodes ago, he's from Republic of Ireland, I believe you said, didn't you? Says Ireland on his bio, not UK or Great Britain. So just to make sure that I'm not getting myself into trouble there. Yeah, it's a touchy subject over there.

Yeah. All right, folks. That is the up and coming riders as we see it. If we miss somebody or somebody else should be on the list, email us. MotoPod, MotoPodcast.com.

Hit us up on our socials as well. With all that said, Rich, I'm going to tell everybody ride safe. Yeah. See you next time.