Iwata’s move
Ai Ogura as a response to the snatching of Fabio Quartararo: Yamaha, looking towards 2027, found itself without its captain, and the departure of the 2021 world champion is even harder to swallow for the Iwata-based manufacturer considering that Quartararo will go to Honda.
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Yamaha covered the top rider position by signing Jorge Martin, and then yesterday came the rumor regarding the second rider for the factory team, which is a tasty choice from all points of view. The house of the three tuning forks, in fact, chose Ai Ogura, and in many ways, it is a move that can also be read as revenge against Honda.
Ai Ogura, in fact, went through the entire ranks within Honda, which has a very extensive program in which it invests to have at least one ‘flagship’ rider in MotoGP, as was the case, for example, with Takaaki Nakagami from 2018 to 2024, and before him Makoto Tamada and Tohru Ukawa, not forgetting the late Daijiro Kato. Ogura raced in the colors of the Honda Asia Team in Moto3 and Moto2 from 2019 to 2023. Honda wanted to promote him to MotoGP as early as 2024, but Ogura, in light of a Honda in ‘mechanical bull’ version that demanded a physical toll in terms of injuries that was nothing short of exorbitant from Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez, Cal Crutchlow, Takaaki Nakagami and Pol Espargarò, preferred to ‘escape’ from the protective wing of the golden wing, settling in the rookie MT Helmets team.
The choice was spot on to say the least; Ogura, with the Boscoscuro prepared by the Spanish team, won the Moto2 title and since last year has been in MotoGP riding the Aprilia RS-GP of the Trackhouse team, the satellite squad of the Noale-based manufacturer. Ogura started brilliantly a year ago, then injuries took him somewhat off the radar of the top rankings. In Texas, however, he was headed for a podium as the result of an irresistible comeback that failed to materialize only due to a technical DNF. Yamaha has very little to lose in this situation, and taking Ogura – aware that the official Aprilia team is already full with Marco Bezzecchi and Francesco Bagnaia – is a great bet as well as a subtle and delightful snub to Honda, which raised a top-tier Japanese rider who, from 2027, will try to make his fortune on the ‘wrong’ Japanese bike in the eyes of Honda management.
