MotoGP finds itself in an uncomfortably in-between position. It can’t afford not to break through and become a globally popular sport. But it is also too poor to afford to invest the money to make that happen. That is the logic underlying the buyout of Dorna by Liberty Media. The US-based media company can see the potential which MotoGP has to become huge, and it has the financial means to take it to the next level. MotoGP will never by F1, but it can be a lot bigger than it already is.
The US has always been the nut Dorna has worked hardest to crack. And it remains resolutely uncracked, as TV audiences remain firmly stuck in the niche territory, and crowds at US rounds stay disappointingly small. Three-day attendances (always a poor measure, but the only one I have to hand at the moment) at Laguna Seca only topped 140,000 in the first few seasons, before dropping to around 130,000. Indianapolis started off with a bang, hitting 174,000 in 2008, the first year the series was there, before slipping to around the 135,000 mark.
The move to the Circuit Of The Americas has not made an impression on those numbers. 2016 was Austin’s best year, with 131,881 fans coming through the gate over three days. Mostly, though, crowd numbers have struggled to hit 120,000, with 2024 seeing a total of 122,559 over three days, and 44,271 fans turning up on the Sunday. Only Qatar (15,165), Phillip Island (36,481), Motegi (42,018), and Silverstone (42,529) had fewer fans at the track on Sunday, and Motegi and Phillip Island were wet races.
Outnumbered by F1
Compare the MotoGP attendance at COTA to F1. The 2024 edition of the F1 race in Austin saw somewhere between 130,000 and 150,000 fans turn up on both Saturday and Sunday. The total weekend attendance was somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000. Those crowds are well outside what MotoGP could hope for, but half of 75,000 in one of the wealthiest motorcycle markets in the world should be achievable.
MotoGP and F1 are completely different audiences, of course. The success of Drive to Survive tapped a highly lucrative market for F1, of young viewers, women, and families. That saw an explosion of interest in the four-wheeled series, where the MotoGP version, MotoGP Unlimited, fell flat. And so there is huge interest for F1, but MotoGP is left with its core market, and subsequently much lower crowd numbers.
That is a shame, because the facility, and the layout, and the show which the circuit puts on at COTA is outstanding. There is a huge amount to do, and a great vibe at the track. And if you’re lucky, and the race and the weather cooperate, you are in the middle of Texas’ wild flower season, and the slopes are a sea of blue and red, as bluebonnets carpet the hillsides.
The racing can be pretty good too. The 2024 edition of MotoGP was highly entertaining, only spreading out toward the end, with a surprise winner. It was also the last time a MotoGP race was won by someone not on a Ducati, Maverick Viñales taking a convincing victory for Aprilia.
Toughest track of the year
The track is the most physically demanding on the calendar, thanks to the constant string of corners the riders face. Even the back straight offers little rest, as the riders wrestle their bikes along its undulating length. It should be marginally less tough this year, after the second part of the resurfacing work to lay new asphalt around nearly all of the length of the circuit.
That resurfacing was necessary, because of the ground the surface sits on. The Texas clay soaks up water in the extreme downpours which can ravage Texas Hill Country, and then dries out completely in the summer heat. That causes the substrate to move, creating dips and hummocks, bumps and depressions, and making for a surface that one F1 driver described as “like a motocross track”.
Most of those bumps have now gone, though COTA’s back straight remains an undulating affair. The track will still be a huge challenge physically. But will be slightly less of a challenge to navigate your way between the bumps.
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The run to the first corner is one of the toughest on the calendar. Whether you’re trying to get away at the start or coming off the last corner and heading along the front straight, the first thing you are confronted with is what looks like a wall heading up into Turn 1. Riders are hitting the brakes just as they start to head up the hill, making Turn 1 at COTA the toughest place for the front suspension on the calendar.
Turn 1 does offer an excellent chance to overtake. It is a sharp hairpin with a couple of lines, and where it is easy to run wide (or lose the front and take out another rider). Multiple lines are possible because what matters at Turn 1 is not the entry, but the exit. When you round the tight left hander, you need to line yourself up as carefully as possible to plunge back down the hill into the fast, sweeping right of Turn 2.
Turn 2 matters because the speed you carry through here determines how much you enter the ever-tightening section that follows Turn 3. The track flows left, right, left, before turning harder right at Turn 6 and then cutting back left again at Turn 7. It is punishing, because you are wrestling the bike from left to right and then having to brake and accelerate. Then do it again for the tight Turn 8 and Turn 9.
For a look at just how tough that section from Turn 3 through Turn 9 is, see the above data comparison supplied by Triumph of two Moto2 bikes from 2024. The green lines are from a fast rider, and if you look at the bottom trace, showing rear brake use, and the trace third from the top, showing throttle opening, you can see just how hard the rider is working. The rider is using the back brake so much to help turn the bike through the tight section, and using the throttle to balance it out.
The fact that the faster rider (green lines) is using the back brake so much, while the slower rider (red lines) is not tells you all you need to know about the effectiveness of the rear brake as a tool to help you go faster.
Out of Turn 9 and you are heading toward some kind of respite. There is the fast left of Turn 10, over the crest and down toward the hairpin at Turn 11. There was a massive bump on the exit of Turn 10, which made navigating it extremely tricky, but the riders will be hoping that the resurfacing has solved that particular problem.
Round the tight left-hand hairpin of Turn 11, and you are onto the back straight, accelerating hard through the gears and hitting 355 km/h along a straight which rolls and tends slightly toward the right. At the end, you are hard on the brakes for the tight left of Turn 12, another prime overtaking spot. But because you are so hard on the brakes, it is also a place where it is easy to overcook the corner, carry too much speed and end up way too wide to be useful.
Out of Turn 12 and a short burst up to the relatively tight U of Turns 13 and 14. Then another short run into the tightening Turn 15, before firing out of that right hander and up and over a slight incline for the almost endless trio of Turns 16, 17, and 18. From 18, you are down the hill to the last couple of chances to over take, the two left handers before the start and finish line. You can try to get a pass done at Turn 19, but you need to beware, as it leaves you open in the final corner, Turn 20.
Beating Mr (nearly) Perfect
Fast, challenging, and anticlockwise makes it a perfect foil for Marc Márquez. The Spaniard has won 7 of the 10 races he has started at Austin, missing the Americas round in 2023 after picking up an injury in the fateful first race in Portimão. He probably should have won in 2019 too, losing the front at Turn 12 while leading comfortably due to an electronics issue. And he would have been in with a shot of victory last year, but crashed out at Turn 11 with a problem due to his brakes.
All that is a roundabout way of saying that it is hard to imagine who is going to beat Marc Márquez this weekend. On the best bike on the grid, fresh off the back of a perfect score – pole, sprint, and GP win – in both of the opening races, he is looking unstoppable. Normally here I might posit a few possible options for who might be capable of beating him. But in his current form, and on his current bike, I’d say the weekend is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
That’s not to say he will have it all his own way. It is easy to look past Márquez’ Ducati Lenovo teammate based on the first two rounds, but Pecco Bagnaia has already outscored his points total in the first two races of 2024. If he turns up to Austin with a bike that has lost the updates made from last year, as he has said he wants, he is likely to be competitive. He crashed out of the lead in 2023 after winning the sprint race, and has started from pole twice. If he can get a bit more comfortable on the bike, he can be competitive.
So far, it has been Alex Marquez who has been his brother’s toughest challenger. But that was at Buriram and Termas de Rio Hondo, two tracks that really suit the Gresini Ducati rider. Austin is a different kettle of fish: his best result in MotoGP here is P12 in 2021. But there is no doubt that the younger Márquez is in peak form, and has really gelled with the Ducati GP24. Whether he can push his brother as hard in Austin as in Argentina remains to be seen. But he could still be a factor.
KTM’s conundrum
Last year’s race was won by Maverick Viñales on an Aprilia. Viñales has historically been strong here, winning both sprint race and GP in 2024, and finishing on the podium in 2018. But this year, he is on a KTM, and so far, the KTM has not really troubled the front runners, Viñales only finishing in the points once this year. It would be a miraculous turnaround for Viñales to be anywhere near the podium at Austin.
Viñales’ Red Bull KTM Tech3 teammate Enea Bastianini has an even stronger record in Austin. He won in 2022, and finished third in 2024, but like Viñales, the Italian is struggling on the KTM RC16. But the nature of Austin may work in his favor. Bastianini does well when tire life is a concern, as it is in Texas, and in longer races. There is no race longer or tougher than Texas, so Bastianini may well be further up the order than usual. The downside is that his ‘usual’ in 2025 is scratching around for points.
KTM’s hope will mostly lie with Pedro Acosta, who finished second here last year. But the Spanish sensation has struggled with the bike in 2025, to the extent that speculation is starting to mount about an early exit. Probably premature speculation at the moment, but speculation that isn’t going away soon. But as Brad Binder said in Argentina, the performance of the KTM depends on the amount of grip available. Both Binder and Acosta will be hoping for some help from the new surface.
Chances for Noale
Aprilia poses the most intriguing prospect. Maverick Viñales won on the bike last year, and this year’s RS-GP is a much better machine than the 2024 version. Jorge Martin is still absent recovering from injury – sensibly, given just how tough the track is physically – but with Marco Bezzecchi and Ai Ogura, the manufacturer has two mouthwatering prospects.
So far, Bezzecchi has not been as impressive in racing as he was during testing, but he has still showed a lot of promise. His adaptation to the Aprilia has gone well, but the finesses of riding are quite different when racing compared to practice. If he can get straight through to Q2, as he has done for the first two rounds, he will be on the right path for a solid result.
After his unfortunate disqualification in Argentina due to using a non-homologated ECU (an error of logistics rather than an attempt to cheat), Ai Ogura will be keen to get his strong rookie debut back on track. He has a podium in Moto2 at the Circuit Of The Americas, and he has shown consistent pace. This is Trackhouse Racing’s home circuit, and there will be a lot of expectation falling on the shoulders of Ogura and teammate Raul Fernandez. They both have the tools to perform here.
HRC on the rise
Of the Japanese factories, Honda is best placed to impress. The bike has won eight times here, seven with Marc Márquez and once with Alex Rins, so it is not just the rider that matters here. It is also a good track for Honda’s riders: Luca Marini has a podium here from 2023, and Joan Mir finished fourth in 2022. Johann Zarco has a P5 in MotoGP and a couple of Moto2 podiums.
What’s more, all three are coming off top ten finishes in Argentina (though Marini was helped by Ai Ogura’s disqualification). Johann Zarco has been extremely impressive, being consistently fast and getting the best out of the Honda RC213V.
But Austin may expose the Honda’s weakness. The bike is strong on braking and corner entry, but it has little rear grip in acceleration and lacks top speed. With hard acceleration from first gear out of Turn 11 and Turn 20, that is going to make life hard for the Honda riders.
The boys in blue
Finally, to Yamaha. The Yamaha M1 suits the layout in COTA, having finished on the podium regularly with multiple different riders, including Fabio Quartararo. Though the bike still lacks rear grip, it at least has some top speed, so they may get slaughtered coming out of Turns 11 and 20, but they have the speed to stick close if they can stay in the slipstream.
Both Alex Rins and Fabio Quartararo have a strong record here, this being one of Rins’ best circuits. The Spaniard has two victories in Austin, on both a Suzuki and a Honda. Though it is probably too much to ask to think of a win here, don’t be surprised if Alex Rins finishes on or near the podium. And Fabio Quartararo is likely to not be all that far off either. Even Jack Miller on the Pramac bike could be a threat.
The teams and the riders love Austin, so there will be a host of special liveries and helmet designs. The Circuit Of The Americas has a very special feel, and the event stands out every year. If only American race fans would turn up in the numbers the event deserves.
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