NASCAR Team Trackhouse Enters MotoGP With Aprilia
US-based team replaces ousted RNF team
NASCAR outfit Trackhouse Racing has entered a three-year agreement with Aprilia to take over its satellite MotoGP team. The American team replaces Aprilia’s previous partner, the CryptoData-owned RNF Racing, which was recently kicked out of the series for “repeated infractions and breaches of the Participation Agreement”. The Trackhouse Aprilia team will compete in the 2024 MotoGP season, retaining contracted riders Miguel Oliveira and Raùl Fernandez.
Trackhouse Racing is owned by former NASCAR driver Justin Marks, with business partner Armando Christian Pérez, who is best known as the Grammy Award-winning artist Pitbull. The team is relatively young, only entering the NASCAR Cup Series in 2021. Going motorcycle racing is a new endeavor for the team, however, let alone at this highest of levels.
Aprilia Racing will be handling all technical aspects as well as the RS-GP prototype race bikes. Both Oliveira and Fernandez are contracted directly with Aprilia, and it’s believed that most of the RNF crew will be retained as well. Aprilia Racing and Trackhouse will work together on the track and development during the season.
"We are happy and proud to welcome Trackhouse into the Aprilia Racing family. What they have been able to build in a very short time in NASCAR is an extraordinary presentation card, which anticipates the potential of this partnership,” says Massimo Rivola, chief executive officer of Aprilia Racing. “This is thanks to Justin Marks and his team, whom I got to know through my long-time friend PJ Rashidi, and with whom we were immediately in sync both in terms of technical ambitions and marketing and communication developments in such an important market as the US. Our commitment will increase significantly, a responsibility we gladly take on because, I am sure, it will allow us to grow even more".
The U.S. connection is an important part of this arrangement. During the team’s announcement presentation, Marks spoke about watching motorcycle racing at Laguna Seca and American icons such as Kevin Scwantz, Eddie Lawson and Nicky Hayden. The Kentucky Kid’s influence in particular was recognized, with an Aprilia RS-GP bike dressed in an American-flag livery resembling the design used on Hayden’s debut on the Ducati Desmosedici at the 2008 post-season test.
While Americans have had a storied history in Grand Prix racing, its influence has waned in recent years, with fewer U.S. riders competing at this level, and Laguna Seca and Indianapolis no longer part of the schedule. Circuit of the Americas remains a fixture on the calendar, and it will be great to see an American presence on the grid once more.
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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It would be nice to develop some American riders to compete in MotoGP.
Not an American team without American Riders. Of course riding electronically controlled 4 strokes it isn’t Grand Prix Racing either so WGAF anyway?🤣