MotoGP young gun talks ‘thing I would like to never repeat’ after 2024

Raul Fernandez says he would “like not to repeat” ever having to change bikes midway through a MotoGP season after going from the 2023 Aprilia to the 2024-spec.

The Trackhouse rider started the campaign on last year’s Aprilia and was a consistent top 10 challenger on it, achieving his best grand prix result of the year in Barcelona in sixth.

But from the British GP, Fernandez was switched to the 2024 RS-GP and struggled to understand it, with his best result a 10th on two occasions in the second half of the campaign.

As Aprilia’s only remaining rider for 2025, Fernandez was also tasked with carrying out a lot of development work, which meant he “didn’t have time for us” to focus on himself.

Ending the year 16th in the points, Fernandez says he “didn’t improve” across the year and hopes to never have to change bike again during a season.

“At the end, it was super difficult,” he said.

“We didn’t improve. Maybe we tested a lot of things and we didn’t have a lot of time for us.

“So, we were focused on improving the project and trying to understand a lot of things.

“I tried many, many things with the bike from last year. I changed a lot of things, we tried, we had to understand a lot more things.

“But in the end we understood nothing. It’s frustrating. Yeah, we understood a lot of things but in the end I couldn’t use them. So, this is the frustrating part.

“I don’t want to do this thing [change bike during a campaign] next year or in my life.

“I would like to not repeat this thing. It’s really difficult to change all of the bike in the middle of the season.

“If you change small details, ok, but the bike is completely opposite.

“So, you need to change a lot of things on your riding style. So, it didn’t help us.”

Fernandez remains with Trackhouse for another two years and will be joined by reigning Moto2 world champion Ai Ogura next year.