MotoGP rookie Ai Ogura makes “not the fastest, not super talent” admission

Ai Ogura steps up to the MotoGP class in 2025 as the reigning Moto2 World Champion and with six Grand Prix victories to his name, but is nonetheless under no illusions about his own natural talent.

In addition to his six race wins, all of which have come in the Moto2 class, Ogura has 27 Grand Prix podiums (19 in Moto2, eight in Moto3) and six pole positions (five in Moto2, one in Moto3), and the Japanese rider has — despite his current contract with the satellite team of Aprilia, Trackhouse Racing — been nurtured through his career on the Road to MotoGP by Honda.

It would seem, then, easy for Ogura —  who, in winning the 2024 Moto2 title, became the first Japanese rider to win a Grand Prix title since his old team boss at Honda Team Asia, Hiroshi Aoyama, won the 2009 250cc World Championship — to have an over-inflated ego fuelled by his own accomplishments.

However, “I know how I am,” Ogura said in his World Champion’s press conference following the Thai Grand Prix last October.

“I’m not one of the fastest, I feel that I’ve got not really super talent, but if you work really hard I believe I can get this thing, and or whatever; I know in myself that, if it happens it’s nice, but it’s a very low possibility.

“I was just dreaming for this ‘number one in the world’. I mean, maybe only for that year, but to get this title is what [wanting] for all my career.”

Ogura admitted that his motivation for winning the championship in 2024 was increased after missing out on the 2020 Moto3 title in the final race, and losing out in the 2022 Moto2 season to Augusto Fernandez.

“The biggest target in my racing career was to get a World Championship title, it doesn’t matter [if it’s] Moto3, Moto2, or MotoGP” he said.

“So, after I lost two championships — one in Moto3 (2020), one in 2022 in Moto2 — I was just only dreaming about this title.

Ogura added: “I don’t start well this season, [Sergio] Garcia had much more points than me, but I was not really worried about the championship. Even finishing sixth or seventh, we knew our potential that we can win the race, we can finish on the podium every race if we work in the correct way.

“This started to show up, I won in Catalunya and everything was going well, but I got a fracture in Austria and after that I think for me Misano 2 (Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix) was huge.

“I still had pain, but I won the race and I could make the team motivated one more step, and in the last part of the season we finished many times on the podium and just controlling [the championship].

“It was not the perfect year, but a super-nice season.”