Despite past champions like Kevin Schwantz, Nicky Hayden, or Wayne Rainey, MotoGP currently lacks any American riders on the grid. Joe Roberts, competing in Moto2, is the highest-ranked, but his performances in the intermediate category don’t show him as an exceptional talent. Carmelo Ezpeleta, CEO of Dorna, discussed this shortage of American riders.
The Spaniard explained to GPOne.com that potential future riders need to start development at a very young age, and the USA doesn’t have as clear a path to MotoGP as it once did:
– To have American riders, or from anywhere else, we need to start at a young age. In the USA, in the past, WSBK was a route to MotoGP, but now with MotoAmerica, that’s not the case, even though it’s a high-level championship, and our relationship with Rainey is great.
According to Ezpeleta, the possibility of having championships similar to the European and Asian Talent Cups is under consideration, although he admits it won’t be as easy to implement them in the United States:
– We have to think about smaller championships and figure out how to have similar competitions to what we have in Europe or Asia. In the United States, there’s some difficulty due to the minimum age of riders, but we’ll try to have American riders.