MotoGP's early-2025 breakout star is facing his first real slump

A different MotoGP rider might have been really unsettled by the fluctuation in form experienced by rookie Ai Ogura in 2025.

Ogura had started the season in Thailand as the best Aprilia rider. He was at least a clear second-best of the whole line-up to Marco Bezzecchi for that first stretch of the season, dominating more experienced Trackhouse team-mate Raul Fernandez weekend after weekend.

But this has swung completely. Bezzecchi has pulled well clear, Fernandez has caught and decisively overtaken him in terms of pace and tester Lorenzo Savadori - standing in for Jorge Martin - became an unwelcome frequent neighbour on the timesheets.

It can really mess with a rider, especially a young one. But Ogura's outward demeanour is by and large unchanged. And his own view of his season offers a solid explanation as to why.

"First two-three races were - for me it was not normal," Ogura told The Race in an exclusive interview.

"From Jerez, Le Mans, it was really more like... my real potential. Beginning of the season, OK, you have a lot of testing days and then I saw many kilometres already, but you are still new to MotoGP.

"There are a lot of things you don't know. Sometimes it makes you fast, because you don't know, you just go with the bike - and go and make your maximum."

And then you crash - Ogura has been bitten multiple times already this season, including a Silverstone crash that gave him a minor tibia fracture.

"I knew this before I got on a MotoGP bike. I mean, it was fantastic that I finished fifth in Thailand," he added. "For me it was like 'what?', it's a good result.

"But at the same time I knew that it's not going to be like this all season. I was ready for this. I'm fine with what I have now - injuries, bad results, whatever. I'm fine."

The whole impetus behind the interview was one throwaway remark - Ogura's almost-derisive laughter earlier in the season when asked whether he saw himself as a natural solution for the factory Aprilia team in case it cannot fix the Jorge Martin situation.

It now has fixed it with Martin staying... but what was so laughable about Ogura's candidacy, given the quality of his start to the season?

"It's because it's my first year, and I have a two-year contract with the Trackhouse team, I am happy with my team, and I knew that there are riders who for now are not really performing well but have the potential, like for example Enea [Bastianini] or Maverick [Vinales] at the beginning of the season or whatever.

"So... for me, if Aprilia looks at me, it's... I don't say it's funny, but I don't know how to say it. Yeah."

And his knowledge tougher rounds were coming up was "also the reason why I was laughing. Because... I knew that the first two-three races is not a real representation".

Flying the Honda nest

Ogura's entire career before joining Trackhouse was Honda-tinted, to the point which only a handful of recent moves - Marc Marquez-to-Gresini, Jorge Martin-to-Aprilia - were more stunning in the moment than Aprilia's American satellite picking him up for this year.

Such was his association with Honda, him moving just didn't really feel like an option even worth speculating about - until suddenly it was reality.

He could've already been a MotoGP rider in 2023, with LCR Honda. Ogura admits this openly.

"I felt I wasn't ready," he explains. "I wasn't really happy about my performance [in Moto2 in 2022].

"In the races somehow I could finish fourth, fifth, sixth, even on a bad weekend. That's quite OK. But in practice, many times I was not even top 10. That made me feel like 'eh, I'm not ready'."

He nods along when I tell him that at the forefront of his mind must've been risk for a young rider to burn themselves in the premier-class with a too-soon graduation, then never get the chance when they're ready.

And, of course, there's also the background of the Honda RC213Vs having been not just a fair bit slow at the time, but also a lot less compliant than it has become since.

Perhaps he proved to himself that he wasn't ready, because that 2022 season in Moto2 felt like him and Augusto Fernandez taking turns trying to give each other the title. He laughs and shakes his head when I ask him to forgive me for putting it that way.

Fernandez's crash at Phillip Island meant Ogura had one hand, or at least a few fingers, on the title, when he himself fell off at Sepang.

"[The crash in] Sepang I will never forget.

"[Then] in 2023, before the season started, I got an injury and the season was almost over. So, 2024, I said to forget 2022, I need a title, because if not I will regret all my life.

"Finally I achieved it last season, so it's fine, but 2024 season is this [one thing], 2022 is this [another thing]. It's still hard to forget, but for now I'm quite OK with this."

Despite what transpired in 2022, a MotoGP graduation - when ready - was a clear priority over sticking around to win the Moto2 title.

It was possible that the former would come without the latter. It even looked likely, when Ogura exited the Austrian Grand Prix weekend with a fractured hand while chasing after his points-leading team-mate Sergio Garcia.

But Garcia's form nosedived and Ogura's, as he quickly got healthy, soared. His tenure as a Honda rider - even if he wasn't on a Honda bike then, and no longer in a Honda team either (having swapped Honda Team Asia for MT Helmets MSI) - ended on a high note. But it's not that leaving was easy.

"It was really tough. I mean, I grew up as a Honda rider, and they brought me to this level," he said.

"Just when I moved to MotoGP I changed the brand. Even for myself, that was not really good. But... I mean, yeah, it was really hard."

Rebuilding momentum

There is no question now Ogura needs to get himself out of his current funk.

He is, in part, a victim of his own success here, but there is also no real feeling that Trackhouse or Aprilia are concerned.

Ogura's injury has clearly hindered his momentum, or to put it more accurately his 'rhythm', which seems so important in modern MotoGP.

Trackhouse team boss Davide Brivio will remember better than anyone how weird, stop-start, hard-to-gauge Joan Mir's rookie season was when he was Mir's boss at Suzuki. He will remember better than anyone what happened in season two.

The only concern, if there's to be a concern, is Ogura's form in the rain, which has been lacking. There's been a gradual improvement curve in the wet session-to-session, yes, but it's been easy to notice specifically because of how far off he'd been to begin with.

Ogura suggested at the start of his path in MotoGP that the Moto3-to-Moto2 step is harder than Moto2-to-MotoGP. He says, though, this is not to be misinterpreted as an idea that Moto2 is somehow harder than the premier class.

"First step, Moto2 to MotoGP was easier. To go, I don't know, two seconds slower than the top one. Moto2 to MotoGP is easier. But... after you reach 1s, 1.5s off from the top guys, then the problem comes.

"And you really have to start to work. If you arrive at that point, every category is the same. It's really hard to make those last five-six tenths, that last second."

Suddenly he's having to find this second again. But he has the time, and the credit he'd bought himself with general excellence in Moto3 and Moto2 and the incredible start to his MotoGP career.

For now, any talk of his next contract in 2027 is "too far".

After Thailand, he looked like the most natural option ever for a factory team to swoop in. It is more complicated now - which Trackhouse might well be happy about, given Brivio is well-aware of the risk of having riders poached just as they enter their peak.

But it would take a brave man to bet that we're not going to see early 2025-level Ogura again sometime before the 2027 shuffle begins in earnest. You get the feeling that shuffle will include him one way or another.