Raul Fernandez Stays On With Trackhouse Racing Aprilia For Two More Seasons

By David Emmett |

After teasing an announcement yesterday on Social Media, today, Trackhouse Racing announced that they have extended their contract with Raul Fernandez for another two seasons. The Spanish youngster will remain with the team through the 2025 and 2026 MotoGP seasons.

The official press release announcing the contract also confirms that Fernandez is to get the 2024 spec Aprilia RS-GP from the next MotoGP round at Silverstone. As the engine is virtually unchanged from 2023, the updates consist entirely of an aerodynamics package and chassis parts. 

The Trackhouse announcement leaves the team with one seat still not confirmed. The two main candidates for that seat appear to be Jack Miller and Joe Roberts, with Miguel Oliveira looking set to join Pramac Yamaha for 2025. I wrote about the impact losing three of its four riders may have on Aprilia's MotoGP project yesterday.

The press release appears below:

 

TRACKHOUSE RACING RETAINS #25 RAUL FERNANDEZ

Trackhouse Racing joined the 2024 MotoGP World Championship as America’s only team in the premier class and now has its first rider signed for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Welcome back to the House – Raul Fernandez!

Since the early days of the Trackhouse Racing project to enter the MotoGP World Championship, back in November of 2023, Raul Fernandez has embraced the vision to form a new, dynamic and competitive American team at the pinnacle of global motorcycle racing. From the very first test, the 23 year old from Madrid, Spain, has pushed the limits of his Trackhouse Aprilia RS-GP23 and steadily gained speed, consistency and confidence – and has been a valued leader on his #25 side of the pit garage.

Bringing on young talent has been a hallmark of the Trackhouse approach from the beginning when Justin Marks opened Trackhouse Racing as an entry in the NASCAR Cup series in 2021. After just 3 years, Trackhouse has achieved 7 wins in the ivy league of stock car racing and has become increasingly competitive on two wheels with front-row qualifying performance and a Sprint race podium last time out at the German Grand Prix.

As one of the standout young talents in the MotoGP World Championship, Raul joined the premier class in 2022, having been a very close 2nd place in the intermediate Moto2 championship in 2021 – scoring eight wins along the way and in the eyes of many, the class act of the year. His MotoGP career to date has seen Raul steadily gaining confidence and in 2024, his true potential has become clear with a solid, competitive, environment around him in the Trackhouse garage and the experience of Team Principal, Davide Brivio, helping to guide his approach to racing.

Trackhouse has chosen to continue working with Raul, aiming to help him grow his career and the performance of the team for the future. Having shown his pace on the 2023 specification Aprilia, Raul will graduate onto the latest spec RS-GP24 at the next round – Silverstone, for the British Grand Prix and all at Trackhouse are excited about his prospects for the rest of this season and the next two years to come. Go Raul - Vamos!

RAUL FERNANDEZ

“I’m super happy to remain with Trackhouse Racing MotoGP. That’s all we wanted; this new project, with Justin and Davide, is great and they have built a very good team. I am delighted to hear their plans for the future as they have a clear idea of what they want to do and for me, from the beginning of the year, it was my priority to try to stay in the team. At the end, I get to be here for the next two years which leaves me very satisfied but, of course, this also means we have a lot of work to do. We will have the full factory material in 2025 and 2026, obviously great news and right now, we are gearing up to start with a new bike in the middle of this year, so we have to make good use of this to prepare for next year as well. We need to stay calm, understand everything about the bike and see what we have to do for the 2025 season – it is very important. Trackhouse Racing MotoGP is just an amazing team, I love the ideas of this American organization and I’m also happy to see Justin’s ambitions. He is new to MotoGP but ready to bring something different in here for the American market and I hope we can make a difference - trying to make MotoGP grow there. Also, with Davide I’m very happy. He won five titles in MotoGP so far and I think he’s the right person to help me to fulfill my dreams. I strongly believe in him and his abilities to create a great team, I’m just over the moon. Now, in Silverstone, we will receive the 2024 upgrade specification of the Aprilia, which is going to be exciting. The first part of this year has already gone well, especially the last four rounds, as we managed to make some big steps and took the maximum from the bike. I feel that we are on the limit at the moment, so it’s great to jump to the new Aprilia now. We will have the same material, like the factory riders and Miguel, so it will be interesting to find out about our level inside the championship, especially on the Aprilia side.”

DAVIDE BRIVIO - TEAM PRINCIPAL

“We are happy to secure Raul in our rider line-up for the next two years. Having seen him at work in the last few months, we have appreciated his talent and I feel that he has been changing his approach to racing and that he is willing to work, willing to put in the effort to improve, to solve problems and this is always with a positive approach. This is something that we have appreciated and it will be very important to continue for our future, having already 3 year’s experience in MotoGP and knowing the latest 2024 spec Aprilia RS-GP from Silverstone to the end of the season – it will be the best way to prepare Raul for the coming two years. I think we have a lot in common; the way of thinking on this project and Raul is happy with his crew, he is happy about the team direction and so there are all the conditions we need to make our challenge stronger, help get Raul to be a stronger rider and keep pushing to make Trackhouse Racing a better MotoGP team.”

JUSTIN MARKS - TEAM OWNER

“I am thrilled that Raul will join Trackhouse for the future - he has shown the dedication and commitment necessary to excel at the MotoGP World Championship level. We’re a new organization and learning every day so having a young, hungry, rider like Raul will be tremendously beneficial as we continue to work with Aprilia building the team. Raul has tremendous speed and talent and we all know that, as his experience grows, he will be closer and closer to the top step of the podium.”

MotoGP
Aprilia
Raul Fernandez
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Comments

Seems like a bit more pomp than was perhaps required for an unpopular fair-to-middling rider who clearly only had one option to remain in MotoGP. I guess the crack Trackhouse PR team needed something to do to stay focused during the summer break, so a regular press release wouldn't do.

I know Davide Brivio has recently done some rounds talking up Raul Fernandez and stating that the data 'shows his potential', but despite being strong on last year's bike at tracks where last year's bike was comfortably quick, I just don't see how Raul will turn the page and start showing some real promise like he had done in Moto2.

I think their plan was to keep one rider for consistency's sake and let their performance determine which. Aprilia has 3 new riders, tough to see it as such but Raul is the "experienced one?" 

He may have experienced some fortune. Looking fwd to seeing what the whole Black program can do together next year, fingers crossed. Odds that one or two riders get on swimmingly w the bike don't seem unlikely. Martin is hungry and has an axe to grind, and Miller can help the bike. 

Re Oliveira's wife above, the headline brought a reaction but not after getting the story that included their age when their parents got married. Not as oddly unsavory as Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones bass) and his son's daughter in law eh? Btw, not reading "What Rossi says about Marquez at Ducati" and such either.

Tire pressure penalties on the other hand, now that bugs me. 

Raul? Even if I look past his petulent behavior and his poor results, what justifies this signing? I just don't see the potential. (and I am not advocating for Roberts) 

I look at all the great promising racers in the world and see RF get a two year motogp contract...aaargh. Sorry for the rant, but, geez. Ask Remy about "consistency." 14th place consistency.

Can somebody explain the ‘the team needs continuity’ and ‘he brings experience’ argument for resigning RF.

I’d say you have a couple of years worth of data from Aleix and Maverick more or less running at the front. You lost them as riders, so be it. Use their data for reference.

Put Martin on it, he’s a good enough rider to tell you exactly what he needs from the bike. Why would you need a rider who has clearly not gelled with the bike yet, bar some one-off performances limited to a handfull of sessions (not even talking race weekends here), to tell the team (or Martin in this case) what to do next? I just don’t get it.

And the Brivio ‘We see Raul’s data’, well I don’t buy it. What is data if the results aren’t there. Sounds a lot like this new type of European football data driven player evaluation. They take out the human side of the equation and end up with an underperforming player. And then they wonder why that is.

I’d love to hear what Wilco Zeelenberg has to say about it. I bet he can’t say it on the record though…

 

I also wonder about Aprilia’s level of professionalism regarding delivering performance consistency and why they think they need RF for continuity. Great riders can quickly adapt and get the best performance out of a bike, plus when you have the likes of of Martin, Bezz, and hopefully Miller in addition to finding the speed they’ll be able to tell the engineers what the bikes not doing relative to Ducati and KTM etc. This would have to be valuable for development. All AF can do is go around the track and provide them with a benchmark. If the new riders get up to speed quickly and outperform him, they might regret retaining him. 

Exactly.

As I’m not against any rider, I hope he succeeds. But it will be very interesting to see how rider and team will go about it if he doesn’t show progress and is constantly outperformed by his fellow Noale riders.

That said, he is now offered a quite unique opportunity of half a season on the latest spec bike to already show what to the outside world what the insiders see in the data. If he ‘fails’ to do that this year, there will be some Italo-American headbanging going on behind closed doors.

Makes for an interesting side story, bring it on.

Nothing against RF, but I’ve never gotten excited about the guy either on or off the track. I do hope he succeeds, but I’m doubtful we will see anything extraordinary from him. 

Perhaps if they could have kept Aleix as a test rider / rider coach RF might not have been retained.