What you should know about Yamaha's new MotoGP signing
Yamaha has unveiled Izan Guevara as a MotoGP rider for its satellite team Pramac in 2027, replacing series veteran Jack Miller.
Unlike Miller, who is a household name, Guevara may well be not all that recognisable to many fans who tune in to the premier class - and many of those who do know the name may be surprised to see him getting the call-up.
If you're in either of those categories, here's what you should know about MotoGP's newest Spaniard.
Guevara was a prodigy...
Very few riders - maybe only Pedro Acosta - had a better run through the categories below MotoGP across the years 2019-2022 than Guevara.
He comprehensively won the European Talent Cup over the likes of Fermin Aldeguer, David Alonso and Diogo Moreira, saw off Acosta and Xavi Artigas in a three-way Spanish Moto3 title race and was a very strong rookie in the Moto3 world championship (though had his thunder stolen by Acosta, who became rookie champion in the category).
With Acosta moving up to Moto2 immediately, Guevara took control of the Moto3 category in his absence - his already-high reputation only growing and public praise aplenty, including from living legend Marc Marquez.
It also hadn't hurt that Guevara had embedded himself with a fantastic Moto3 team in Aspar - which was also taking him to the intermediate class in 2023.
...but lost his way
But Guevara's move to Moto2 felt off from the start.
He was horribly uncompetitive in testing, eventually struggling so much that it could only be explained by something fundamental - which turned out to be a wrist injury paired with arm pump.
Once healed up and finally ready to race, he still looked like nothing special, struggling to crack the points amid suggestions of both a riding style incompatibility and insufficient physical preparation for the switch to the category.
There were better signs in year two, but it was still disappointing - and a route to MotoGP looked complicated.
This has worked for Yamaha before
It won't have hurt that over at Pramac, which had just become Yamaha's MotoGP satellite team and also expanded in Moto2, Gino Borsoi was team manager. Borsoi had been in charge at Aspar when Guevara shone in Moto3.
Pramac's Moto2 debut came with the Boscoscuro chassis - which convincingly won the 2024 title with Ai Ogura, but by 2025 was re-usurped by its main rival, Moto2 standard-bearer Kalex.
In that context, Guevara (who moved over from Aspar for 2025) performed well enough if not spectacularly. But he did close out the season with a win - which earned him a prize run on the Yamaha MotoGP bike - and then properly broke out this year, entering title contention and elevating himself far above other riders on Boscoscuro machinery.
In MotoGP, he will be Yamaha's first rookie full-timer since RNF curiosity signing Darryn Binder. But Yamaha will hope and expect that his case is less like Binder's and more like Fabio Quartararo's - its previous MotoGP rookie, who was in many ways a Guevara-like reclamation project.
It lucked into Quartararo. But it seemed to believe in Guevara throughout - reportedly so much as to include a MotoGP clause into his Pramac Yamaha Moto2 deal, which he is rumoured to have done enough to activate.
All eyes on Moto2 riders
Nobody knows what the true pecking order will be like in 2027, but the initial expectation is that the switch to 850cc bikes and Pirelli tyres will level the playing field among the riders.
KTM tester Pol Espargaro, who has done extensive 850cc riding (and is mentor to another upcoming MotoGP debutant, Dani Holgado), went as far as to suggest Moto2 graduates will be an immediate threat because the 2027 premier-class bikes will be closer to Moto2's current machinery.
Guevara's Moto2 fortunes improved as the series pivoted from Dunlop tyres to Pirellis, though this is likely correlation over causation.
But having conclusively overcome such a major career trough he may quietly be an extremely shrewd pick-up by Yamaha - and one of the most interesting storylines of next season.
