Fresh rumours in the MotoGP paddock have suggested that Toprak Razlatiouglu's long-serving, title-winning crew chief Phil Marron will also move across from the World Superbike Championship for 2026 - but not to join rookie Razlatiouglu at the Pramac Yamaha team as had originally been reported earlier in the season.
It's believed that Razlatiouglu had lobbied Yamaha hard to bring the Northern Irishman with him when he makes his MotoGP debut next year but that Yamaha had preferred someone with more recent experience of the prototype machines than Marron, who last worked in MotoGP with brother-in-law Eugene Laverty at Aspar Ducati in 2016.
Since 2019, he has worked with Razlatiouglu, starting out at satellite Kawasaki squad Pucetti Racing with him before graduating to first Yamaha's factory team and then BMW's, winning titles in 2021 and 2024 as well as being well on track to make it triple success in 2025.
It's believed that Razlatiouglu will instead work with Ducati veteran Alberto Giribuola next year, following his high-profile and unhappy split from Enea Bastianini and satellite KTM team Tech3 last month, something believed to have in part been fuelled by Giribuola's confirmation that he would depart for Yamaha at the end of the season.
That had in turn initially led to the belief that Marron would remain at BMW next year to work with new WSBK arrival Miguel Oliveira. The Race understands that as recently as the last MotoGP round in Indonesia a fortnight ago, Oliveira believed Marron was close to a new BMW deal and expected to be working with him in 2026.
That has flipped since then, though, following last weekend's WSBK round at Estoril, where The Race's sources suggest Marron told BMW that he would be moving to MotoGP after all in 2026, albeit to join not Yamaha but KTM.
And while it's not yet confirmed where exactly he will slot into KTM's operations, one suggestion is that he will take over from Andres Madrid as Brad Binder's crew chief, a rumour that the South African racer didn't completely dismiss when questioned about potential changes to his crew ahead of this weekend's Australian GP.
"At the moment everything's staying the same," Binder replied. "For the future I'm not 100% sure. But at the moment everything's the same.
"At the moment I'm not too sure exactly what the changes will be, or if there will be any changes. I'd say it's still wait to be seen. Until the end of the year everything's staying exactly the same. And then we'll see after that.
"I really enjoy my team, I like everything exactly the way it is. I'm really happy. But you know, sometimes things change and let's wait and see."
