Whilst the rider market itself is in overdrive in MotoGP™ for 2026 and beyond, there’s also an abundance of talking points elsewhere with the Red Bull KTM Tech 3 team, ran by Herve Poncharal. On Friday at Aragon, he addressed the rumours of perhaps working with or selling entirely to Guenther Steiner, the ex-Haas Racing F1 team boss. Steiner has appeared at two GPs in 2025 – the Americas GP and British GP – and Poncharal confirmed the interest is real.
"It's always good to listen to people who are coming to invest"
“From 2027 there will be a brand-new chapter with new technical regulations, so it's very important to secure, for a company like mine which is a MotoGP™ team, the future,” stated Poncharal during a pitlane interview in Practice on Friday. “As Winston Churchill I think said, "to govern is to foresee", and I need to think. Clearly, at the moment, I have a super good deal but in case that organisation cannot be the same from 2027 to 2031, I need to prepare what you can call a plan B. It's always interesting to listen to people who are coming to invest, that means your company and the MotoGP™ Championship is an exciting prospect to invest.
“I have a lot of requests to meet, one of them as you know is Guenther Steiner, which I enjoy talking to. He's a very straightforward person and very nice person to eventually work with. So right now, I'm listening to the proposal, it could be to come as a shareholder, you know, as a partner, but it could be also buy the whole team. What I'm pushing is to secure the possibility to be alive and kicking in 2027-2031, I hope with the Tech3 name, with my base, my team and different investors, just to make things safe.”
"There are other parties"
The Frenchman continued, stating that there’s other avenues to explore with other investors: “Clearly there are other parties. This is quite difficult because all of them are quite interesting, so it's quite difficult to pick up and decide what is going to be the best one because it's a big choice and a very important one. I think if we open our capital or if we decide to eventually sell, it should be by the end of 2025 because clearly, 2026 should be a transition year to be fully ready from 2027. You know, from 2027, the whole paddock will have to move up to change, and you need to be ready. No matter what happens, I will be here in 2026 and beyond to do the transition. I will have a role, this is the wish of the potential new partners and I would say the wish of my best friend, Carmelo Ezpeleta.”
Speaking about his future with KTM for 2026, Poncharal confirmed they’ll remain together: “For sure. I have a contract, a valid contract and a really good contract, and I want to thank Stefan Pierer and Pit Beirer for giving me this working relationship. Our contract is until the end of 2026 and I have no sign and I haven't been told about what happens. In 2026, there's going to be 4 Red Bull KTMs on track: Acosta, Binder, Viñales, Bastianini. This is it at the moment. All I wish and everything I'm working on at the moment is even from 2027 to 2031 to decide a deal with KTM and to be the second KTM team on the grid with maybe different colours, maybe different investors on my side but I've never been talking to any other manufacturer at the moment, I read also a lot of things, but I can promise you at the moment that 100% of our energy is to work with KTM until the end of 2026 and to work on a new contract, 2027-2031, with KTM. We trust them and we're surely going to be there with a competitive package.”
"When you fall in love with a girl, you'd like things to happen quicker than they actually do!"
On when the future will be finalised and made public, the 68-year-old Frenchman was as eloquent as ever: “You know, when you fall in love with a girl, you would like things to happen quicker than they actually do. We are 2, more than 2, we're quite a few and it depends on the feeling. I'm working on it but by the end of 2025, it's my wish, I would like everything to be clear but at the end of 2025, it could be September, it could be October, you know. I can't give you a precise date at the moment but what I would like to say is that I will do everything I can to have Tech3 with the structure and the people in the MotoGP paddock for a few more years.”