- Raul Fernandez has re-signed with Trackhouse Aprilia through the 2028 MotoGP season, committing to a team that will look completely different by the time his new deal begins.
- Team principal Davide Brivio, the man Fernandez credits most for his turnaround, is leaving Trackhouse at season’s end, reportedly headed to a senior role at Honda.
- Teammate Ai Ogura is also departing for Yamaha, meaning Fernandez will enter 2027 as the only rider left from the lineup that turned Trackhouse into a genuine MotoGP threat.
A Rider Betting on a Team That Won’t Look the Same
Raul Fernandez has made a career out of getting dropped and proving the decision wrong. KTM let him go after a difficult 2022 season. Trackhouse, then still racing under its earlier RNF identity, picked him up instead. Four years later, he has become exactly what that gamble was supposed to produce: a grand prix winner, a regular podium contender, and the rider Trackhouse Aprilia just committed to for two more seasons, through the end of 2028, even though almost everyone else who built that success with him is leaving.
“We at Trackhouse are thrilled to announce that Raul Fernandez will stay with the team for the next two seasons,” team owner Justin Marks said when the renewal became official in August. “Since the beginning of this team’s journey, Raul has been fully committed to our mission and objectives. He has grown as a rider both on the bike and with his preparation, approach, and maturity. We believe that this team and these bikes are poised to be a consistent championship threat in the years to come and that Raul can help carry us to great heights in this sport.”
The timing of that statement matters. Fernandez signed it knowing two of the most important relationships in his MotoGP career were ending at the same time.
The Mentor Walking Out the Door
Davide Brivio is not a household name to casual motorsport fans, but inside the Trackhouse garage, Fernandez has repeatedly pointed to him as the reason his form and his mindset both improved over the past two seasons. Brivio, a veteran of MotoGP and Formula 1 paddocks with a reputation for getting the most out of talented but inconsistent riders, is leaving Trackhouse at the end of this year. He is widely expected to take on a role at Honda that extends beyond MotoGP entirely.
Losing the person most responsible for your professional development, right as you commit to two more years with the team he built around you, is an unusual position for any athlete. Fernandez re-signed anyway, a decision that suggests either confidence that the structure Brivio put in place will outlast him, or simply that the opportunity in front of him, racing competitive factory-supported Aprilia machinery with a team still on the rise, outweighed the uncertainty of losing his closest ally in the garage.
He will also lose his teammate. Ai Ogura, who arrived at Trackhouse alongside Fernandez as part of the team’s push into a new Aprilia era, is moving to Yamaha for 2027. The identity of Fernandez’s new teammate was not settled at the time of the renewal, though Enea Bastianini, freed to negotiate after KTM declined to exercise its option on him, was among the names linked to the seat.
What Fernandez Is Actually Signing Up For
On pure results, the case for staying is straightforward. Fernandez has not won a Sunday grand prix in 2026, but he has taken sprint victories at Mugello and Assen and collected three podiums, including two in his last two races before the renewal was announced. Trackhouse’s Aprilia package has become measurably more competitive over the past two seasons, closing a gap to the factory Aprilia and Ducati teams that once looked much wider.
That improvement is the foundation Marks is betting Fernandez can build on without Brivio physically present. It is worth noting that losing a senior figure does not necessarily mean losing everything that person built. Teams in every form of motorsport survive staff transitions by keeping the systems and the people below the departing leader in place. Whether that holds true at Trackhouse will become one of the defining storylines of its 2027 season, and Fernandez will be the rider most directly affected by the answer.
There is also a practical dimension to the timing. MotoGP’s rider market moves fast, and seats at competitive teams do not stay open for long once a rider’s form improves. Fernandez re-signing in August, before the 2026 season had even finished, locked in his future before any other factory team could make a competing push for his services on the back of a strong final stretch of races. Waiting to see how the Brivio and Ogura departures actually affected the team’s performance would have meant risking his own leverage in a market where podium-capable riders are always in demand.
A Season Defined by Small Progress and One Honest Mistake
Fernandez’s 2026 season has not been without its stumbles, and he has been unusually direct about owning them. After a disappointing showing at Misano in September, he did not blame the bike or the conditions. “My mistake,” he said, pointing to his own error rather than looking for external explanations. That kind of accountability has become part of what Marks and the wider paddock point to when discussing Fernandez’s growth, not just as a rider chasing lap time but as a professional learning to manage a long season with its inevitable setbacks.
It stands in contrast to the version of Fernandez who arrived at the team in 2023, a rider with obvious speed but a reputation, dating back to his junior categories, for crashes and inconsistency. The Fernandez signing a contract through 2028 is a different rider than the one KTM let go four years earlier, and the team’s willingness to commit two more seasons to him reflects that change as much as it reflects his results.
Entering Motegi as the Last One Standing
Fernandez headed into the recent Japanese Grand Prix weekend at Motegi as effectively the senior figure left in a Trackhouse garage already in transition, even with Ogura and Brivio technically still present through the end of the year. The 2026 season has turned into something of a farewell tour for the pairing that helped build the team’s recent competitiveness, with every remaining race carrying the knowledge that this specific combination of rider, teammate, and team principal will not exist again.
For Fernandez personally, the next twelve months carry a different kind of pressure than a title fight or a must-win weekend. He has to prove, in real time, that the improvement Trackhouse saw in him over the past two seasons belongs to him and not just to the environment Brivio built around him. If he keeps progressing toward his first Sunday win under a new team principal and a new teammate, the Trackhouse renewal looks like a rider who outgrew the need for any one mentor. If his form slips once the familiar faces are gone, it will raise harder questions about how much of his turnaround was really his own.
Either way, Fernandez chose to find out while wearing the same leathers, for the same team, rather than testing his value on the open market. For a rider once discarded by a factory program, betting on continuity, even uncertain continuity, says something about how far he believes he still has to go, and how much he still credits the team that gave him the chance to get there.
Riders who outlast their mentors are not unusual in MotoGP’s history, but doing it while staying loyal to the same team is less common than switching manufacturers at the first sign of instability. Fernandez could have waited, tested the market once 2027 seat announcements started falling into place elsewhere, and let other factories make a case for why their garage offered more certainty. He signed before any of that played out, which either reflects unusual trust in Trackhouse’s foundations or simply a rider who has learned, the hard way, that the grass on the other side of a MotoGP paddock is rarely as green as it looks from a distance.
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