Why one MotoGP outcast is confident in his ‘unusual’ route back to the top

As we all wind down into a quiet winter at the end of a busy MotoGP season, it offers us a chance to reflect on the campaign that unfolded across 2024. Perhaps not unfairly, few will look back fondly over Augusto Fernandez’s final season with the Tech3 GASGAS squad.

There were few highlights for the 27-year-old in a season that saw him score points in grands prix on just seven occasions (nine in total if we take into account sprints too). In the end, he finished the year with 27 points in 20th in the standings, sparing himself the ignominy of coming last by virtue of factory Honda duo Luca Marini and Joan Mir’s utter misery on the RC213V.

The 2024 campaign was a marked step backwards for Fernandez, who scored 71 points in 2023 on the GASGAS-branded KTM at Herve Poncharal’s squad in a far more consistent season. Fernandez even cracked the top five at the French GP last year with a fine ride to fourth, while there would be three other top 10 visits.

By contrast, he saw the top 10 just once in 2024 when he rode to 10th at the penultimate round of the season in Malaysia.

Fernandez’s woes were put further into the spotlight by the fact he was paired with the MotoGP paddock’s new golden boy Pedro Acosta. The 2023 Moto2 world champion was a hit straight away when he put in a brief podium challenge in the Qatar GP, while at round two in Portugal he had already breached the podium.

Acosta’s super rookie year led him to sixth in the standings, missing out on top non-Ducati honours by just two points to veteran (by KTM standards in 2024) stablemate Brad Binder. Acosta scored nine podiums to Binder’s two (taking sprints and grands prix into account) and came the closest any KTM did to challenging for a win.

Fernandez has always been in something of an unfortunate position. From the moment he was announced as stepping up to MotoGP with Tech3 in 2023, he was seen by many as simply being a seat-warmer for Acosta’s inevitable promotion in 2024. At the time, Pol Espargaro had a two-year deal in his back pocket prior to the serious injuries he suffered in a practice crash in Portugal 2023.

That incident and its aftereffects ultimately ended Espargaro’s career, who moved into a test rider role with KTM as the Austrian brand backed Fernandez for another year.

Tech3 boss Herve Poncharal told this writer at the 2023 Malaysian GP that Fernandez’s perception by the outside world was harsh because he was having to adapt to an abnormal bike without the guidance of experienced team-mate Espargaro. Under the circumstances, Fernandez didn’t do too badly.

It’s also easy to forget that Fernandez is a grand prix world champion at Moto2 level, something Acosta’s crew chief - and Espargaro’s before that -  Paul Trevathan was keen to point out when speaking with Crash.net at the Solidarity GP.

“Augusto Fernandez was a wonderful rookie, a wonderful character coming into the box, super humble, as a world champion - let’s not forget that he is a world champion,” Trevathan noted. “And honestly it was a pleasure. You saw the year before with Remy [Gardner] and Raul [Fernandez] coming into the box, I wasn’t there but I was on the other side looking, and then you saw this and [you thought] ‘oh, my goodness’.”

The 2024 KTM wasn’t exactly an easy bike to get on with. Acosta put in some incredible performances on it, but (as you can read in our exclusive interview with Trevathan) how he achieved those was something of a head-scratcher for the Austrian manufacturer’s technicians.

Fernandez’s biggest issue in 2024 was the KTM’s carbon fibre chassis, which was first raced at the San Marino GP last year by wildcard Dani Pedrosa. Fernandez noted back in October that he was “never comfortable” on the frame, with the Spaniard pointing at a “strange” feeling on the rear stemming from the flexibility of the chassis.

His team worked tirelessly over the year to try and find a solution, even swapping crew chief Alex Merhand out for Alberto Giribuola (former Andrea Dovizioso’s trackside engineer) later in the season - though this was also a means of getting the engineer back up to speed in that role ahead of his renewed association with Enea Bastianini, whom he was last with at Gresini in 2022, next year.

But nothing ever quite worked for Fernandez, who - showing the character that Trevathan highlighted - refused after the final round of 2024 to absolve himself of blame.

“This year just was a combination of a lot of things,” he told the media, including Crash.net, at Barcelona after a disappointing run to 19th in the Solidarity GP. “Of course, maybe the bike was not done for my style. But I’m not this kind of rider. I tried to adapt myself… I can change my style. So, I’m not the kind of rider [to say] ‘this is not my style’ and all these kinds of things. So, I work a lot. This is my job and this is my life. So, at home, I just work to be fast on whatever bike I have. I try to adapt my style to every bike I’m riding but we didn’t do it here. I tried, but we didn’t get to a competitive base at any point.”

Fernandez’s reflection on his time in the premier class so far was magnanimous but also hopeful.

While it was not officially announced, Fernandez’s move to Yamaha as an official test rider for 2025 was confirmed at the post-Solidarity GP test when he appeared in the Japanese manufacturer’s garage decked out in full team gear.

He didn’t ride the M1 at the test due to Yamaha needing to get its new project with Yamaha off the ground. Fernandez thinks there will be an outing in December at a private test: with KTM also set to test at Jerez this month, it’s likely Fernandez’s Yamaha track debut may come then. Crucially for Fernandez, he will get all six wildcard outing on the M1 next year.

Even with Yamaha gaining two full-time factory bikes on the 2025 grid with Pramac, the fact Fernandez will race six times shows just how much value the brand is already placing on him. He will likely be the first one to race Yamaha’s V4 (an engine configuration he has solely experienced in MotoGP) in 2025, if that particular project gets to that stage.

To boot, he has long been Fabio Quartararo’s pick for the role: “It's already a few months that I'm pushing to have a test rider that has been [racing] a MotoGP bike really recently, a rider that is really hungry,” he said at August’s Austrian GP. “For me, Augusto is clearly a rider that I pushed [for] since a few months ago.”

Typically, a rider steps into a test role at the end of their racing career. At 27, Fernandez is by no means old, but the wealth of young talent on the ascendency in MotoGP puts him on the unfavourable side of age in this world.

But that’s not how he sees it.

“It wasn’t meant to be, so my career keeps going in a different way than expected,” Fernandez said at Barcelona. “But it keeps going. I’m still alive. I’ll be back, I’m 100% sure. So [I need to] keep working, keep working hard. In all the testing, maintain the level of a MotoGP bike that we know is different. Yeah, I’m not done. So, looking forward to this next chapter. I’m sure I’ll be back.

“It’s a different path, but in the end winning is just another kind of career but being last is the same as just not being. So, I’m taking this chapter as another way of arriving to where we want to be. So, I’m looking forward to start the new chapter.

“Of course, I’m angry because of this season, but as I said: life goes on, my career is not over and I’m very looking forward to what is coming. It’s just different, because we never see a test rider come back competitively, because it’s not usual. But I will do it…”

Fernandez’s six wildcards in 2025 will act as a good arena for him to cast his net out again, not least with Pramac’s Jack Miller only on a one-year deal. That seat is more likely to go to a younger rider for 2026 if Miller doesn’t earn it again, but Fernandez could make himself the ideal candidate if his test work proves valuable for Yamaha - not least with the looming switch to a V4 he will be logging a lot of miles on.

Whatever happens, Yamaha clearly gains a rider with a grounded mentality as it works its way back up the grid. And it will be that, just as much as tangible results, which keeps the door open on Fernandez’s MotoGP dream…