I don’t envy my old podcast co-host Uri Puigdemont (Tank Slappers, forever). Coming to work and logging in for the morning can’t be fun when you’re sitting on two nuclear bombs. Trust me, as someone who had to break the first Jorge Martin departure story last May, I know the feeling. Because anything can be meme’d nowadays, the now infamous picture of George W. Bush having it be whispered in his air in a preschool that a second plane had flown into the World Trade Centre was completely unnecessary yet strangely apt for the day’s events.
It started at 9:30am. It drops out of nowhere on Motorsport.com that Fabio Quartararo would be leaving Yamaha in 2027, and committing the cardinal MotoGP sin. Heading across the Japanese island and riding for Honda.
In many ways, not a surprise. In equally as many, a huge shock. Fabio Quartararo had become MotoGP’s strongest soldier. An acceptance across the field that his insane talent was being held back by the decline of Yamaha since his title defence year in 2022, the season that cemented Ducati as the new kings of the sport.
2025 was everything great about Fabio, tied down by what Yamaha still is. If the bike was in its performance window, it was genuinely very fast over a lap. Quartararo qualified on pole five times last season, only dominant champion Marc Marquez had more. But that window was so narrow, that anything that knocked Yamaha out of that zone – tire wear, temperature, following in dirty air due to Yamaha’s lack of top speed, and all saw Fabio’s struggles. No rider was overtaken more in 2025. His average finish was five places lower than where he started, starting on average from fifth, but finishing 10th.
It’d be frustrating to see if this was a new sensation, but you could argue it was year four of Yamaha spinning its collective wheels, and Fabio had already initiated that he was on the brink. He had no problem telling the media while his team were wheeling out the anniversary bikes in Assen that he had to see a form of improvement or else he was gone. According to those in the know, it was the team wheeling out their new V4 in Misano and seeing test rider Augusto Fernandez stay largely uncompetitive (and a little crash happy), that was the final straw. Harsh for a first impression, but it’s the only chance you ever get to make one. Seven years in black and blue, and a departure that will feel like his bike looks.
It’s a tremendous coup for Honda, who have been actively shopping for a headline rider again for sometime. They were first in the queue for Jorge Martin, but he was caught up in contract limbo. They made an offer for Pedro Acosta, but his eyes have been elsewhere. They got their man here, and it’s immediately their project spearheader, and one with more promise on the outset. Honda had significant gains in 2025, halving the deficit to Ducati in races, making Tier C on concessions and scoring four podiums and a win in France. Could you imagine how awful Fabio Quartararo had to have felt when trying so hard to win his home race only for Johann Zarco to do it first? Man.
The immediate thought in the aftermath of this news was, what the hell does Yamaha do now? By the time I released my first video on the Fabio news, Uri minutes later dropped his second bomb – Jorge Martin going to Yamaha for 2027.
Yamaha badly needed a star rider again after losing Fabio, their talisman. Jorge Martin absolutely fits that mold, but man was the struggle to get to this point hit home.
Martin’s Aprilia move has been a nightmare from the start. Crashed in first test in Catalunya. Crashed again in Sepang, breaking bones in his hand and foot and missing the rest of the test window. In recovering, he crashed in training, missing the first three rounds. And in his first round back in Qatar, he crashes and gets run over by total accident by Fabio Di Giannantonio. Lucky to be alive, but with a punctured lung and 11 broken ribs, he’d sit out the next seven weekends.
During that time, he kicked up an unholy stink by claiming he could leave after just one year, citing a clause that if he was outside the Top 5 in points, he could walk. Aprilia claimed his injury made that void, and both sides dug in for a very strange, public spat. Martin and his agent Albert Valera insisted he was trying to leave, while Aprilia just wanted Martin to come home with open arms. It took Martin recovering from injury, the realisation that a court case in Italy and the delay of an unregistered rider meaning a potential blackballing from 2026 had Martin concede.
What made it weirder, was that briefly, everything looked good. His first weekend back had him seventh in Brno. He was 4th from 17th on the grid at Balaton Park, just three seconds off rampant teammate Marco Bezzecchi. There was promise, and the team clearly loved him, he got a hero’s welcome back to the garage. But then Japan landed. Martin outbrakes himself into Turn 1, ploughs into teammate Bez, wiping them both out and the Spaniard breaking his collarbone. Season over. Eight weekends out of 22 on the year and by harsh measures, an all-time rough title defence.
After all of that, what does it say that given the first possible opportunity, with days left in January, Jorge Martin couldn’t wait to tie himself down elsewhere. It’s been a freaky silly season in general, with Marquez, Martin, and Quartararo, three of the six or so best riders in the world at their best, all tying down deals at the turn of the year. A few years ago, a deal being at place during the opening weekend was considered rare. This is biblical.
I mentioned this in DRR’s across 2025 and will echo it again here, you will never be able to convince a MotoGP rider that a bike isn’t dangerous if that’s what he truly thinks. Anyone who suggests otherwise is attempting to apply rational thought to an irrational landscape. These are how the people who ride 225mph motorcycles think, rightly or wrongly. By any measure though, Martin has ran through 60% of the manufacturers on the grid, and two out of the three he’ll be leaving under dubious circumstances (KTM in Moto2). If this doesn’t work for Jorge, what next?
And then, the third major news drop from yesterday – Pedro Acosta, after begging and pleading behind the scenes, will get his Factory Ducati seat alongside Marc Marquez. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m a huge fan of Acosta’s. 10 podium finishes already. Unlucky not to have a dub to his name. He’s a rider’s rider. Aggressive, fearless, savagely fast, will ride at 110%, even with the mistakes. And off the bike, he’s a filterless, funny, sassy rider who has no problem with confidence, and absolutely gets the necessary evil that is promotion. He’s a marketer’s wet dream. And with him still being 21, he’s got 15 more good years out there if he stays healthy and motivated.
Once upon a time, Ducati had an ideal pyramid to filter talent up their massive ranks. Pecco Bagnaia, Marco Bezzecchi, Jorge Martin and Luca Marini were all on the wagon. But when you’ve got a dominant bike, you have the flex to just do whatever the hell you want, and Ducati have essentially traded in all their chips (Martin, Bez, Bastianini, etc) for the best rider in the world alongside the best prospect in the world. Jimmie Johnson in the NFL would have been proud of that swindling.
And of course, that required one more sacrifice. Pecco Bagania, Ducati’s true talisman until 2025, is almost certainly gone. Their greatest ever rider on the counting stats – 31 wins in the top flight, with two Championships. He chose a horrible time to have the worst year of his Hall of Fame career. A bit of genuine pressure on the outside from Aprilia, combined with setup hell as Bagnaia tried and failed to chase what he thought was Marquez’s golden carrot and a contract year where the alleged eight figures a year Bagnaia was on, suddenly felt a lot less appealing when you’re trying to tie down Marquez.
Hard not to feel a bit bad for Pecco. I genuinely thought he had so much more goodwill in the bank. Then you remember, this is how Ducati does their business. Andrea Iannone was once hailed as the face of the franchise, but crashing into his teammate Andrea Dovizioso in Argentina had a contract taken off the table.
They splashed out over £20m on Hall of Famer Jorge Lorenzo from Yamaha, only to fire him for Danilo Petrucci after a year and change of struggles and the Spaniard refusing to obey team orders. Dovi would later walk away from Ducati after being a three-time Championship runner-up, and allegedly was barely even on speaking terms with team boss Gigi Dall’Igna on the way out. Ducati are a ruthless team, even by Motorsport standards.
Pecco’s now the biggest name left on the board. Aprilia should be all-in for him, but I fear they lack the cash to make the salary demands. Does VR46 take him home? Surely given he’s the face of the modern Rossi-brand and the academy’s greatest success story. Not like the old man in charge is short of a few quid. Stay tuned, there’ll be a Part 2 where I try and predict the rest of the 2027 grid.
But for now, it’s hard not to sit back in awe of the biggest 24 hours of MotoGP news since Marquez went to the factory Ducati team in 2024. This is going to be the most radical shift in a MotoGP grid I can ever remember and the silly season has barely begun. Alex Marquez wants factory money. Where does Pecco go? Does KTM dip into Moto2 or move Maverick Vinales up? The fact we’re talking about the 2027 grid in January is wild. Let the games continue…