MotoGP has never been closer to the United States. Trackhouse Racing is the newest team in the lineup, taking the place of the former RNF as Aprilia’s satellite team in 2024.
This ambitious project is led by Justin Marks, who, in an interview, explained the project’s goals, the reasons for entering MotoGP, expectations for 2024, and plans for this program in the premier class.
The riders for Trackhouse Racing will be Miguel Oliveira and Raúl Fernández, with the Portuguese rider already confirmed to have an updated Aprilia RS-GP, aiming to hopefully fight for top positions.
Why is Trackhouse coming to MotoGP?
The idea was always to scale this company into a global brand. To be very diversified in the areas we race and the things we do. It’s just that we started in NASCAR – that’s just where we built the company. But as I started to think earlier this year where there were opportunities globally that make sense for Trackhouse to take our brand and our story and our partners to, I wanted to go and see what MotoGp was all about.
Obviously I’d been to a race before, many years ago, and I grew up going to AMA Superbike races. But I wanted to see it in the context of being a business owner. So when I went to Austria and met with Dorna and a bunch of different teams and riders and understood the business structure and the metrics around the sport, I immediately recognised that this is one of the greatest values in all of motorsport in all of the world.
The reach, the passion, how great the racing is and how compelling it is on track. And with the financial lift for independent teams, it was tremendous value. We started having some light discussions with Dorna about what an entry would look like some day, and I was talking about it all in the context of coming in in 2025, spending a year learning this world and figuring out how to get a spot on the grid.
But with what happened to the team and what Dorna was dealing with over there, they kind of just said ‘hey, if you want to come into the sport there’s a opportunity but it has to be right now.’ I had to make a decision very very quickly, and decided I was going to go with it, and we’ve been working very hard since then to try and put it all together.
But with your experience, it’s not been an insurmountable task for your team.
I’ve done this before. I’ve done it with the NASCAR team. Obviously all forms of motorsport are different – the players are different, the economics are different – but the exercise is kind of the same. It’s about learning what sort of assets need to be created, what sort of staff needs to be created.
The same thing exists in NASCAR in that we need to have a very close relationship with our manufacturer, our OEM, who are Chevrolet. Once we identified that it would be Aprilia in MotoG, it was about going to them and presenting them with a partnership structure that would help accelerate our process of getting on the grid.
We went to Rivola and said ‘hey look, would you be interested in taking some of this on because otherwise we can’t do this in eight weeks.’ We needed their help, otherwise it would have been impossible. We’ve done that before with NASCAR so it wasn’t a daunting task in understanding how it all works, it was just the timeframe.
We needed Dorna, our people at Trackhose, Aprilia, and some other elements that we needed all motivated to all work in the same timeframe that MotoGP provided, and thankfully they did to get it all together. It’s pretty remarkable, really.
It looks like Aprilia were waiting for the right partner to step things up.
I actually did then when we came into NASCAR, to create a structure where everybody involved sees the relationship as being powerful and additive to what they’re trying to do. It was a new concept, a new idea, but we went to Aprilia and said that instead of us having a workshop somewhere else and trying to manage all this stuff, why don’t we just find strength in numbers?
Why don’t we just combine our resources and our vision? It’s not factory and customer, it’s two partner organisations. If the Trackhouse team are on the 2024 equipment, then all the parts are the same and the communication is that much more powerful. Aprilia has double the data that they can use to develop and find strength and grow.
That’s essentially what I presented them with and I think that it resonated. You put it eloquently – this is just something that they’ve been waiting for. When we were looking at all the opportunities, the Japanese bikes just didn’t make sense, KTM are pretty devoted to what they were doing, and Ducati is this big machine with all these partners on track.
Aprilia is just this smaller boutique operation that we saw a lot of ourselves in. They’re racers, like us, and it was very comfortable for me to take this scenario to them. I thought that they would respond favourably to it, and they did. Massimo is very motivated, they’re working really hard to get our 2024 stuff together, and I think it’ll be a powerful united front in MotoGP next year.
What are Trackhouse going to do differently in MotoGP?
I think one of the things that I’ve recognised, and one thing that I think Trackhouse can be a powerful participant in doing, is that a lot of the brands that are using Moto to activate and promote are relatively endemic to motorcycle racing. They’re either motorcycle industry brands or they’re brands that have been around a long time because maybe the owner is a motorcycle fan. And then you have Red Bull and Monster.
I think where Trackhouse can come in is, when you look at our commercial partners on the NASCAR side, they’re big global brands. We’ve got Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Jockey, Kubota tractors. We’ve got all these big brands and we want to position MotoGP in the global sponsorship market with the idea of trying to bring big global brands into it. I think that’s where Trackhouse can make a difference.
I also think that one of the ways that Trackhouse has become popular in the United States in our industry is that we’ve invested a lot in content. We place a big importance on storytelling. We pull the curtain back and show the world what we’re all about, amplify our personalities in the race team. I’m excited about doing really interesting and exciting content that fans can be excited about following.
We want to do a lot of behind the scenes content to show what being a MotoGP team is all about to the millions of fans around the world.
The rest, I think, will just come as I get experience in the paddock. As I get experience and learn the sport and get inspired and find these ideas that come to me. That’s really what I do in NASCAR. Sometimes, I’ll walk through the garage area and an idea will come to me just by being at the race track, and then we’ll go and do it and it’s this really cool thing. So I think the rest will just happen over time.
Is one of the targets to convert NASCAR fans to MotoGP fans?
I think that Trackhouse can be very valuable advocates for MotoGP and their strategy to grow the sport in North America. Even among fans of Indycar, sports cars, even dirt racing – everybody kind of pays attention to what Trackhouse does. We’ve got a great voice in the industry.
I’d love to see crossover promotion when MotoGP is in the United States, and we’ve already got some ideas about how to do that, but what’s also nice is getting the MotoG action onto the Trackhouse platform is immediately exposing the sport to millions of new people.
What I love about GP is that it checks the boxes that have been a bit of a struggle for the American motorsports consumer in the sense that the races are 45 minutes long and half the distance on Saturday. There’s three races on Sunday. The turnover of the action is really good.
And it’s one of the only forms of motorsport where you can watch the athlete play the game. A lot of times in car racing you can’t really watch the guy directing it. In NASCAR, we’re asking people to sit and watch a race on an oval that’s three and a half hours long and the cars could be driven by robots and they wouldn’t even know the difference.
But when you see these guys hitting elbows, manipulating the weight of the bike, this kind of stuff – if we show NASCAR fans and the American consumer this kind of stuff, I think that we can immediately have a big impact in how many fans MotoGP has in the US because it’s got all the right ingredients.
Is there a plan to have American racers in the team?
The holy grail for us is an American rider on our bikes winning a MotoGP race – but we’re a long way away from that. We’re a long way away from it in the sport right now, and we’re not going to force it. I think one of the things that we’re going to do at Trackhouse is understand the current status of the American talent pool and what the development ladder in the United States looks like.
Do we need to go work with MotoAmerica and understand where that is right now? How are kids getting started, and where are they getting started? Where are the strong series that are being offered to kids? We’re looking potentially at Trackhouse making investments in the United States to bolster up the development pool and give more and more kids an opportunity.
If we invest in them then, then potentially there’s a larger number to come out of the US ready to go to the Rookies Cup or Moto3 and be competitive. Right now, it’s hard to make that transition, but I think that Trackhouse are motivated to invest at that level. We’re certainly not going to make that happen – it’s not going be an equality of outcome, it’s going to be an equality of opportunity.
We’ll give more of an opportunity by being advocates for the American talent pool and then hopefully one day there’s three, four, five good American riders in Moto2 and Moto3 who are able to get to MotoGP on their own speed and merit.
It sounds like your 2024 objectives are not track-orientated?
We’ll have some good performances on the track and I think that there’s a lot of potential with the bike and we’ve got good riders. But because it’s so new, there’s so much unknown. It’s a new relationship with Aprilia, all the mechanics on the team and Wilco are working with us for the first time, we’re learning the paddock for the first time. All these unknowns and building a team from scratch means it’s very difficult to say ‘OK guys, we need one bike in the top ten.’
My goals for 2024 are to develop the relationship with Aprilia, develop the relationship with Piaggio Group, to understand what’s important to Aprilia, what direction they’re going in with the development of their bike for the next couple of years. To get to know everyone on the team and learn how we extract the best possible performance from everyone, not just the riders. The mechanics, the crew chiefs, everyone.
To get everyone to know me and understand what the vision is. To get our process right, to make sure that data sharing is right and that the way we operate as a team is efficient and productive. If we focus on those things, I kind of hope that the results will start to take care of themselves.
If we keep Raul and Miguel motivated and happy and supported, if you invest in those kinds of things, then the results tend to start presenting themselves. But I don’t know and I can’t have any expectations on the track because all that other stuff that I’ve just said is going to be so much work. It’s going to be fun to get to Sundays and Saturdays and just sit back and see what our guys have got.
And you’ve inherited two really strong riders.
I like the contrast between the two. Last week when we were in Italy doing our announcement, I went to Madrid and had dinner with Raul and his group, then went to Lisbon and had lunch with Miguel and his, and got to know the guys a bit. At first their walls were up a bit. It was like ‘who is this guy?’ Is this going to be any better than what we had before, or the same, or worse? But once I started explaining to them who I am and what motivates me and the commitment we’re making to Aprilia, they started opening up.
I like that we’ve got this veteran cerebral guy who knows where he’s at, who’s confident because he’s won before in the series, and who has a great understanding of the bike and everything. And then we’ve got this kid who is like we say in America full of piss and vinegar. He’s ready to show the world that he’s capable of doing it. They’re both fast and they’re both motivated, and I’m excited about both of them.
In twelve months’ time, what will be a success?
From a business standpoint, getting our sponsors and our commercial partners onboard. Really promoting to the business community how exciting a sport this is and how valuable it is for partners. From a business side, getting great companies to brand this team and using this amazing sport to promote their products and services excites me.
On the sporting side, I want at the end of the year for everyone to have come through this transitional and very unknown period of time and to feel like we’re building something that is going to last for a long time in this sport, and will be special for a long time.
That’s going to require being very strategic in these moments right now, not just throwing caution to the wind because we’re under the gun, but thinking about not only how we succeed in 2024 but how we succeed through the homologation change [in 2027], how we succeed in ten year’s time, how do we succeed as a strong independent team that can really extract the most out of the bike.
And for everyone to just be pleased to have gotten through this transitional period, to be excited about the future. Hopefully that’s not too ambiguous, but what’s important is that we’re trying to lay the groundwork to be here for a long time.
