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Aki Ajo to conquer MotoGP: the manager who comes from the cold

Ajo has had his work cut out for him over a number of years to teach his often fiery Latino drivers to be calm. “I gave them an infusion of fresh Finnish blood.” In 2025 he will become team manager of the factory team with Binder and Acosta. To GPOne he revealed his recipe

MotoGP: Aki Ajo to conquer MotoGP: the manager who comes from the cold

Aki Ajo first competed in the motorcycle world championship in 2001 with his Ajo Motorsport team and won the first two world championship titles in 2008 and 2010 on Derbi 125 with Mike di Meglio and Marc Márquez. In 2012, he joined forces with Red Bull and KTM as a semi-works team for the new Moto3 World Championship, with the 250cc four-stroke single-cylinder machines. This alliance developed into one of the most successful joint ventures in the Moto3 and Moto2 classes (from 2017). Before the Australian GP, the Red Bull KTM Ajo Team has 96 joint GP victories and a total of 195 podium finishes. And the tireless and passionate Finn has already celebrated 70 GP victories with the best Red Bull Rookies Cup talents!

Aki Ajo was actually supposed to form the semi-works team for Stefan Pierer when he entered the MotoGP class in 2017. However, after careful further consideration, this plan was abandoned in Austria and an in-house Red Bull KTM Factory Team was founded. It was not always easy for Aki Ajo to toil away in the two smaller classes and not be in the big spotlight of the premier class, because he would have been confident of this task. However, he was forced to limit himself to training new talents for the premier class for Red Bull and KTM - from Binder and Oliveira to Raúl and Augusto Fernández and Pedro Acosta.

Ajo Motorsport's World Championship title wins
2008: 125 cc, Mike di Meglio, Derbi
2010: 125 cc, Marc Márquez, Derbi
2012: Moto3, Sandro Cortese, KTM
2015: Moto2, Johann Zarco, Kalex
2016: Moto2, Johann Zarco, Kalex
2016: Moto3, Brad Binder, KTM
2021: Moto3, Pedro Acosta, KTM
2021: Moto2, Remy Gardner, Kalex
2022: Moto2, Augusto Fernández, Kalex
2023: Moto2, Pedro Acosta, Kalex

The calm and, at least outwardly, always relaxed and composed Scandinavian Aki Ajo had his hands full in some years teaching his often hot-blooded southern European riders from Luis Salom to Raúl Fernández more patience, nerves, overview and better tactics and strategy in training, qualifying and races. “I basically gave them an infusion of cool Finnish blood,” Ajo used to say with a grin.

Aki Ajo has set the bar very high for the competition teams in recent years, particularly in Moto2. He was runner-up in 2018 and 2019 with Oliveira and Binder and won the titles in 2021 with Remy Gardner, 2022 with Augusto Fernández and 2023 with Pedro Acosta, all on Kalex. KTM only built its own steel-framed motorcycles for Moto2 from 2017 to 2019.

The successes sometimes took on frightening proportions. In 2021, Ajo clinched  an incredible amount of 24 podiums in Moto2 and twelve more in Moto3. He fielded a total of four riders in Moto3 and Moto2; all of them won races in 2021 and three of them in 2022. In these two years, Acosta, Gardner and A. Fernández won three out of four possible world championship titles.

The overwhelming superiority of the Red Bull-KTM-Ajo team was sometimes threatening - at least for the competition. In the first nine Grand Prix races of 2021, the Ajo team took eleven out of a possible 18 GP victories in the Moto3 and Moto2 classes (5x Moto3, 6x Moto2), as well as a total of 21 podium finishes (7 in Moto3, 14 in Moto2). And it continued in this style.

In the end, Ajo Motorsport won the world championship titles in both classes in 2021. The Finn had already achieved this in 2016 with Brad Binder and Johann Zarco. In Moto3, 17-year-old GP rookie Pedro Acosta triumphed in 2021 with the Red Bull KTM after six wins this season; he distanced Dennis Foggia (Leopard Honda) by an impressive 43 points. And in the thrilling finale of the Moto2 World Championship, Remy Gardner (five GP wins, five further podiums, two fourth places) came out on top by just four points ahead of his team-mate Raúl Fernández, who, like Acosta, exceeded all expectations as a class newcomer and celebrated eight GP wins as a rookie. In doing so, he surpassed Marc Márquez's record from 2011. Ajo Motorsport ended a dry spell in 2021, as the team from Finland went four years without any world title after Brad Binder won the Moto3 title in 2016. And in 2019, not a single victory was scored in Moto3!

But the momentum from 2021 was carried over into the 2022 season. Newcomer Augusto Fernández ensured another Moto2 World Championship triumph, although he did not exactly start the season in dominant fashion and, as fifth in the 2021 World Championship (he came from Marc VDS), was initially up against Vietti, Canet, Ogura and, in some cases, Arbolino.

Aki Ajo can now look back on an unprecedented GP record: if you add the 125cc years from 2001 to the end of 2011, there are 127 GP victories in the books, with Raúl Fernandez securing the 100th in the Moto2 race in Aragón in 2021. Incidentally, there are also two MotoE World Cup race wins, which do not count as GP victories. The Ajo protégés have secured 17 victories in the 125cc World Championship and 49 in Moto3 (all on KTM), plus 62 Moto2 GP wins, 14 on KTM (2017 to 2019), the rest on Kalex.

He has also accumulated ten world championship title wins. This makes Aki Ajo the most successful team owner in the two smaller categories. Competitor Jorge “Aspar” Martinez has ten world championship titles to his name as team principal, but four of them only in the Junior World Championship - with Raúl Fernández, Izan Guevara, Daniel Holgado and José Antonio Rueda.

Record: 20 GP wins in the 2021 season

Finnish team owner Aki Ajo is a master of understatement and is constantly busy putting the brakes on euphoria for his riders and his team. One example: when his riders dominated in winter testing, Red Bull KTM team boss Aki Ajo repeatedly emphasized, “We haven't done a race yet.

Ajo's protégés regularly make headlines with unprecedented highlights. Brad Binder won the 2016 Moto3 race in Jerez from last place on the grid. Can Öncü triumphed in Valencia in 2018 (with a wildcard!) in his very first Moto3 World Championship race and has since become the youngest GP winner in history. He was only 15.5 years old! Moto3 rookie Pedro Acosta won in Doha 2021 in only his second GP appearance, despite a pit lane penalty, i.e. despite being banned from the pit lane at the start!

The 2021 season then turned out to be the most successful in the history of the Ajo team. Each of the four riders scored at least one victory. Red Bull Ajo KTM rider Jaume Masià scored maximum points at the start of the season in Doha, while his team-mate Pedro Acosta (17), the Red Bull Rookies Cup winner from 2020, even shone with six GP triumphs. With the Moto2 victories of Remy Gardner and Raúl Fernandez, the tally last year was 20 GP wins.

Ajo is regarded as a remarkably successful talent scout; he has been teasing the maximum out of his riders for years, recognizes every little weakness in his riders and preaches to them every day that only reliability and consistency lead to the goal, i.e. winning the title. “We have to use reliability and consistency like a weapon,” Ajo likes to emphasize. “Even if the young riders don't always succeed - for me, this is the way of working that leads to the goal,” emphasizes the successful team owner and world champion producer. “Especially in Moto2, the focus on consistency points the way forward and leads to the goal. From the first lap in FP1 to the last lap in the warm-up, you have to do everything you can to achieve the best possible consistency over the race distance. This is the key to success in the Moto2 category, where there is parity in terms of chassis material and standardized engines. And I'm sure this recipe will also be helpful for our riders later in MotoGP.

Aki Ajo achieved an unforgettable stroke of genius in 2008: he won the 125cc World Championship with Mike di Meglio on a Derbi, who had finished the previous year in 17th place in the World Championship with a rival Honda team and whose chances of winning the title were put at zero before the start of the season.

Aki Ajo: “Rául has the necessary speed

Although Raúl Fernández bagged no fewer than eight GP victories in his first Moto2 year in 2021 and gave world championship leader Remy Gardner a run for his money (he was contesting his sixth Moto2 season!), the highly talented Spaniard was hugely disappointing in his first MotoGP season in 2022 on the Tech3 KTM. He scored just 14 points and was released to the Aprilia RNF customer team. Rául has yet to make his big breakthrough.  Ajo has never won a world title with the exceptionally gifted Spaniard. But Raúl has proven that he has the necessary speed.

However, the exceptional rider lacked consistency and, with hindsight, the question arises as to whether he was transferred too early to the 2021 Moto2 World Championship and then too early to the MotoGP class after two Moto3 victories and finishing fourth in the 2021 World Championship. But Rául and his management saw the big money in the premier class...

Rough diamond Fernández, the 2018 Moto3 Junior World Champion, was already being chased by a number of rival teams in the summer of 2021, including Rossi's Sky VR46 Moto2 squad. KTM was offered a transfer fee of 500,000 euros for him. Rossi wanted to win the Moto2 World Championship with Raúl in 2022 and then promote him to the MotoGP class with his Mooney VR46 Ducati team.

However, Red Bull KTM had an option on Fernández, who would have preferred to move to Razlan Razali's Yamaha MotoGP customer team, but then came to an agreement with KTM for a place in the Tech3 KTM MotoGP team. Ajo therefore had to cede both Moto2 riders (Raúl and Remy) in the Pierer Group to the MotoGP team after 2021. However, Aki Ajo liked to say: “In my opinion, it is enough if I transfer one rider per year for KTM to the MotoGP class...

Despite his loyalty to Red Bull and KTM, Ajo had to think a little selfishly. That's why he was happy to be able to keep the undisputed exceptional talent Pedro Acosta in Moto2 for another year as the clear favorite for the 2022 Moto2 World Championship. The #37 won the World Championship - and has already claimed four podiums in the 2024 MotoGP as a rookie. However, Ajo's recipe remains unchanged: “We have to keep our feet on the ground. Our riders must take all steps with patience.”

The sometimes strict Red Bull KTM team boss, who acts according to the motto “with carrots and sticks” and is sparing with praise, wants to avoid hasty class changes for his super talents in future wherever possible. “The small classes are not the right time for the riders to be thinking about the big money of MotoGP,” is his clear message.

Statistics Red Bull Ajo KTM Team

Total wins
96 GP victories
195 podium finishes

2012
Moto3: Sandro Cortese, Danny Kent & Arthur Sissis
7 GP victories, 19 podiums, 1st place in the World Championship by Cortese

2013
Moto3: Luis Salom, Zulfahmi Khairuddin & Arthur Sissis
7 GP wins, 12 podiums, 3rd place in the World Championship by Salom

2014
Moto3: Jack Miller & Karel Hanika
6 GP wins, 10 podiums, 2nd place in the World Championship by Miller

2015
Moto3: Miguel Oliveira, Brad Binder & Karel Hanika
6 GP wins, 13 podiums, 2nd place in the World Championship by Oliveira

2016
Moto3: Brad Binder & Bo Bendsneyder
7 GP wins, 16 podiums, 1st place in the World Championship by Binder

2017
Moto3: Niccolò Antonelli & Bo Bendsneyder
0 GP wins, 1 podium finish, 15th place in the World Championship by Bendsneyder
Moto2: Miguel Oliveira & Brad Binder
3 GP wins, 12 podiums, 3rd place in the World Championship by Oliveira

2018
Moto3: Darryn Binder, plus wild card with Can Öncü in Valencia, who won on his GP debut
1 GP win, 1 podium finish, 17th place in the World Championship by Darryn Binder
Moto2: Miguel Oliveira & Brad Binder
6 GP wins, 15 podiums, 3rd place in the World Championship by Oliveira. Team World Championship win, 2nd place in the World Championship by Oliveira, 3rd place in the World Championship by Brad Binder

2019
Moto3: Can Öncü
No GP win, best result: 12th place in Valencia, 31st place in the World Championship by Can Öncü
Moto2: Jorge Martin & Brad Binder
5 GP wins by Binder, 2 by Martin, 11 podiums, 2nd place in the World Championship by Binder, 5th place in the World Championship by Martin

2020
Moto3: Raúl Fernández & Kaito Toba
2 GP wins, 5 podiums, 4th place in the World Championship by Raúl Fernández, 18th place in the World Championship by Toba
Moto2: Jorge Martin & Tetsuta Nagashima
2 GP wins, 6 podiums, 5th place in the World Championship by Martin, 8th place in the World Championship by Nagashima

2021
Moto3: Pedro Acosta & Jaume Masià
7 GP wins, 12 podiums, 1st place in the World Championship by Acosta, 4th place in the World Championship by Masià, win of the Moto 3 Team World Championship
Moto2: Remy Gardner & Raúl Fernández
13 GP victories, 24 podiums, 1st place in the World Championship by Remy Gardner, 2nd place in the World Championship by Raúl Fernández, Team World Championship win

2022
Moto3: Dani Holgado & Jaume Masià
2 GP wins by Masià, 7 podiums, 6th place in the World Championship by Masià, 10th place in the World Championship by Holgado,
Moto2: Augusto Fernández & Pedro Acosta
7 GP victories, 14 podiums, 1st place in the World Championship by Augusto Fernández, 5th place in the World Championship by Acosta

2023
Moto3: Deniz Öncü & José Antonio Rueda
3 GP victories by Öncü, 8 podiums, 4th place in the World Championship by Öncü, 9th place in the World Championship by Rueda
Moto2: Pedro Acosta & Albert Arenas
7 GP victories by Acosta, 15 podiums, 1st place in the World Championship by Pedro Acosta, 14th place in the World Championship by Arenas

2024 (after Motegi GP)
Moto3: Xabi Zurutuza & José Antonio Rueda
1 GP wins by Rueda, 3 podiums, 8th place in the World Championship by Rueda, 22nd place in the World Championship by Zurutuza
Moto2: Deniz Öncü & Celestino Vietti
2 GP victories by Vietti, 4 podiums, 8th place in the World Championship by Vietti, 19th place in the World Championship by Öncü

 

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