Why factories now deal with customer teams

The MotoGP World Championship has changed dramatically since the introduction of this new four-stroke category in 2002. In that year of transition, the 500cc two-strokes were still competing against the 990cc four-strokes, which had three cylinders (Aprilia), four (Yamaha, Suzuki), or five (Honda). Ducati did not win until 2003.

And even a successful private team like Bob McLean and Peter Clifford'd Red Bull Yamaha  managed to get by with an annual budget of 6 million US Dollars. Today, the customer teams have budgets of 12 to 15 million Euros, and Dorna contributes up to 7 million Euros per year in subsidies for several private teams.  

From 2002, Honda's and Yamaha's four-stroke customer teams were mostly equipped with the previous year's material because, for factory teams, a defeat against an in-house customer team was as bad as a defeat against a competitor brand.

Nevertheless, the Gresini-MoviStar Honda team, for example, with riders such as Sete Gibernau and Marco Melandri, fought for the World Championship title three times from 2003 to 2005 and outperformed the Repsol Honda team three times in those three years!

Why did this happen? Because the customer team owners, often former racers like Agostini, Rainey, Roberts, Pons, Cecchinello (he brought Casey Stoner into MotoGP in 2006), and Gresini often had a better feel for the qualities of the riders than the sometimes obviously clueless and overburdened desk clerks of the factory teams. 

Many years passed before individual factories offered the latest generation of MotoGP racing bikes to customer teams, such as Honda to LCR Racing with Stefan Bradl from 2012 to 2014 and to Gresini Racing with Álvaro Bautista.

Instead, Tech3 Yamaha never received a current factory bike for riders like Andrea Dovizioso, James Toseland, Ben Spies, Cal Crutchlow, Pol Espargaró, or Bradley Smith until the end of 2018. This was one of the reasons why team owner Hervé Poncharal switched to KTM in 2019.

Only four riders with 2023 bikes in 2024

However, at some point, other factories also became convinced that the chances of success would increase if at least the more promising of the two riders in the satellite teams had factory equipment, such as Fabio Quartararo in Petronas-Yamaha in 2020. The Pramac team also initially only received the latest factory equipment from Ducati for one rider, before Campinoti's team received the latest Desmosedici bikes for both winning riders in the days of Bagnaia and Miller. In 2021, Valentino Rossi received a 2021 factory bike on the private Petronas-Yamaha team. KTM also did everything it could to equip the Tech3 satellite team as competitively as the Red Bull KTM factory team, but the technical updates were not always quick enough during the season. That changed in 2022, 202,3 and 2024, as we can see from what rookie Pedro Acosta achieved with his five podium finishes.

Since Trackhouse Aprilia riders Miguel Oliveira and Raúl Fernández also rode RS-GP24s after the first Grand Prix in 2024, there were only four 2023 bikes in the 22-rider line-up, namely Pertamina Enduro VR46 Ducati (Bezzecchi, Di Giannantonio) and Gresini Racing (Alex and Marc Márquez).

Dorna has actually stipulated a maximum leasing fee of 2.2 million Euros per rider and team. But the teams have room for negotiation with their motorcycle suppliers. If a very wealthy private team, such as Trackhouse Aprilia, wants a current bike for one or two top riders, they can negotiate individually with the factory. And the leasing rates for a 2025 bike are, of course, significantly higher than for a used 2024 bike. And it wasn't so long ago that even two-year-old MotoGP bikes were being leased.

The enterprising Dorna managers would prefer it if every factory equipped a customer team. But Yamaha did not have one for two years, while Ducati had three. Now they lost Pramac to Yamaha and are down to two satellite teams: Pertamina Enduro VR46 and Gresini.

Leasing costs are a matter of negotiation

Most satellite teams pay more than 2.2 million Euros to their manufacturer and equipment suppliers, such as Öhlins or Brembo because, in most cases, damaged parts have to be replaced and paid for, as do technical updates to components, such as suspension, brakes, clutch, frame, electronics, aerodynamics, and so on. Several manufacturers offer the teams a lump sum for the damaged parts and, only if this amount is exceeded, are additional invoices required.

Smarter team owners try to get “all-inclusive” deals so that they don't go bust with crash-happy riders and can also afford some updates.

After all, if they do not protect themselves, they may suddenly have to pay the manufacturer 5.6 million Euros instead of 4.6 million Euros, but not a single owner of a customer team planned for this financial leeway.

Increasingly, the factories are also paying salaries and hefty success bonuses for  riders from  customer teams, like at LCR, GASGAS-Tech3, Pramac, and  Trackhouse-Aprilia.

For some customer teams, the factories at least cover the costs of the bonus payments, which are also variable and unpredictable.

After all, if a private rider achieves four victories, such as Enea Bastianini in 2022 at Gresini Racing or Martin in 2023 with Prima Pramac, considerable bonus payments are received, but no sponsor puts any additional money on the table.

“You always have to have a five to ten percent leeway in your budget for costs that you can't calculate in advance,” GASGAS-Tech3 Team Principal Hervé Poncharal said. “But you can't play poker and plan fifty percent of the annual budget without hedging, otherwise you get into a danger zone.”

At the time, this meant that several teams, such as Scot Honda and Interwetten-Honda, disappeared from the MotoGP World Championship after just one year in 2011.

When the manufacturers did not support the strong customer teams so generously, the satellite teams were naturally more independent. Before the one-size-fits-all tire era (which began in 2009), this also applied to the choice of tire brand (Michelin, Bridgestone, Dunlop), the choice of rider, and even the choice of crew chiefs, sponsors, or oil and fuel brands.

When Ducati Corse considered transferring Enea Bastianini from Lenovo to the Pramac team in exchange for Jorge Martin in November 2023, even Pramac team owner Paolo Campinoti declared: “That will be decided by Ducati.”

Six months later, Campinoti decided to switch to Yamaha after 20 years with Ducati because, he was not allowed to keep future World Champion Jorge Martin or replace Marc Márquez (from Gresini) for 2025. 

“As team owners, we now bear a much smaller financial risk,” Tech3 Team Principal Hervé Poncharal confirmed.

Today, manufacturers like Honda, KTM, Yamaha, and Aprilia have much closer relationships with (only) their customer teams - LCR, Tech3, Pramac Racing, and Trackhouse Racing - than in the past, when they simply leased the bikes but had little influence on team management, on the search for sponsors, and on the choice of riders.

Today, top riders have contracts with factory teams, and the respective motorsport managers then assign them to one of their two teams, depending on their ability, experience, and prospects of success. 

Customer team owners are sometimes given a certain say. “Since the coronavirus era, our riders have had two contracts, one with HRC and one with LCR Racing,” LCR team owner Lucio Cecchinello told GPOne.com.

“The four motorcycle factories, which will supply one customer team in 2025, are, therefore, directly involved with all four riders. Two riders are part of the official factory team, while the other two are supported just as well as the factory riders, even if the customer team is run by a separate racing team company that covers part of the costs,”  Hervé Poncharal admitted.

Today, the business risk of the most successful MotoGP team owners is limited. Unless there are budget shortfalls caused by unreliable sponsors, like what occurred with the RNF team in 2022 and 2023, with short-term backers WithU and CryptoDATA.