After months of talk in the MotoGP paddock and beyond, the Tech3 team’s sale to a consortium fronted by former Formula 1 team boss Guenther Steiner and former touring car team boss Richard Coleman is official.
Steiner, Coleman and Tech3 founder Herve Poncharal appeared before the media on Catalan Grand Prix practice day at Barcelona to announce the news and take questions.
Here are our main takeaways.
How this will actually work
While Steiner and Coleman are so far the faces of the new project, the financing behind it comes from IKON Capital - the "investment platform and advisory business" overseeing the project.
Speaking to The Race after Friday's press conference announcing the news, Poncharal confirmed that the deal is for a complete takeover of the team, leaving him with no stake in it whatsoever.
Steiner’s role is as CEO, with former Craft-Bamboo touring car team boss Coleman as team principal, returning to such a role having set up a sports management company since his World Touring Car Championship stint.
Poncharal’s staying around
It’s business as usual to the end of 2025, with Poncharal and Coleman then taking charge from the start of January 2026.
Poncharal will remain involved in a consultancy role, described in the official announcement as focused on “nurturing young talent” but explained in slightly more visceral terms by Steiner.
“We want to learn and to have Herve along with us next year to get as much of his experience,” he said.
“There are not many people in this paddock who have the experience of Herve, and we want to drain him, basically!
“He will not be bored next year, I’ve promised him that. He’s worried that he will get bored, I said no, we will drain you, next year it will be a much smaller Herve because we will take everything out of you that you have put in!”
It will still be Tech3
The team will still be called Tech3 and will continue to run from its current base in Bormes-les-Mimosas in France.
Steiner doesn’t plan any fundamental changes - there’s a new boss, but this will still be the Tech3 that Poncharal created and has run for over two decades.
“The team will stay where it is,” Steiner declared. “The team will continue his legacy. Why would I change something which works?”
Steiner and Poncharal seem like old buddies
In the months since this prospect emerged, The Race MotoGP Podcast has regularly mentioned that Poncharal might be the closest thing to a Steiner equivalent in character terms that MotoGP already had.
Their similarities and the rapport they already have was obvious in their appearance on stage together, the pair cutting in on each other’s answers with jokes and Poncharal even playfully slapping Steiner’s thigh at one point.
Poncharal began by joking “in the beginning I was a bit scared of him, but when you look at him you think it’s going to punch you” but said he had opted to work with Steiner after considering many options for Tech3’s future because of how well they got on and the respect he had for what Poncharal had already created and achieved.
“A very human person. Somebody who very much listens to what you want, who cares about you and what you’ve done,” was Poncharal’s summary.
“I think we are not exactly the same but we still have a lot of things in common.”
With Poncharal sticking around and promising he’ll remain just as committed to the company as ever, is there potential for these similar characters to eventually clash? Perhaps. When The Race asked him what he thought Steiner’s biggest challenge in adapting to MotoGP would be, Poncharal replied with a straight face: “To cope with me”.
Why Steiner’s doing this
“I’ve always loved MotoGP. I’ve never had time to enjoy it because I was always working,” said Steiner, explaining that the idea of getting involved grew from how much he enjoyed a visit to its Austin round last year.
He said moving to a different role in F1 after his split with Haas hadn’t appealed as much as trying something new, and noted that he’d been a complete beginner in the NASCAR world when he went there to head up Red Bull’s shortlived team in the late 2000s - so had experience of coming from F1 into an unfamiliar motorsport world.
“I have a lot to learn, I’m very conscious of that,” he underlined, adding that he’d made himself, Tech3 and MotoGP a “don’t f*** it up” vow.
This isn’t just about Liberty (but it also is)
Given Steiner’s experience of what Liberty Media has done for F1’s profile, his arrival in MotoGP has seemed intertwined with Liberty landing there, too.
Both Steiner and Coleman were adamant it wasn’t that direct a link.
“Pre Liberty closing, the sport was already growing. Record attendances, TV numbers up, etc.,” said Coleman. “We just see Liberty as an accelerator of that.
“Guenther and I were fully committed to MotoGP regardless of whether the Liberty transaction closed or not. We believed in MotoGP full stop.”
That said, there were also plenty of references to MotoGP’s growth potential. Steiner referenced the United States - an area where Liberty has been transformative for F1 - in particular.
“Perhaps the championship is slightly over-weighed to certain parts of the world and that’s obviously going to change in the thesis that Liberty have,” Coleman admitted.
