After December 31, 2025, Hervé Poncharal will hand over his Red Bull KTM Tech3 team to Günther Steiner from South Tyrol, who will then take over as CEO of the renowned MotoGP team, while Richard Coleman will assume the role of team principal.
Poncharal will be available to the new owners as a consultant next year, should his expertise be required by the future Tech3 management during a transition period. “But the Valencia GP represented a kind of ‘farewell’ for me, because it was the last time I’d appeared there as a team owner in almost 40 years,” Poncharal explained in an interview with GPone.com.
The 68-year-old Frenchman is handing over a well-established team. The contract with Red Bull and KTM runs until the end of the 2026 season, and MotoGP riders Enea Bastianini and Maverick Viñales are also under contract until the end of the upcoming season; their salaries are paid by KTM. In the Moto3 World Championship, the talented Argentinian Valentin Perrone and Finnish rookie Rico Salmela will compete. “Salmela was recommended to me by his compatriot Aki Ajo,” says Poncharal. Perrone finished the 2025 Moto3 World Championship tenth overall, securing a second and a third place, despite missing several races due to injury.
“Although I won’t be operationally involved next season, I’m pleased that KTM was the first manufacturer to test the 850cc prototype with Pol Espargaró and Dani Pedrosa on the track back in November, at Jerez. This demonstrates their commitment to participating in Dorna and Liberty Media’s new five-year MotoGP project, running from 2027 to the end of 2031. The release of the video with Pol on the RC16 for 2027 is exciting. All I can say is ‘Chapeau!’ I wasn’t present at this rollout, but I heard that Pol and Dani Pedrosa were quite satisfied with the performance.”
In a video shared on Instagram, KTM’s test rider Pol Espargaró showcased a bike equipped with the new engine and Pirelli tyres at Jerez on Thursday.
“Hear that? The engine just fired up. Our 850cc is alive, and it’s ready to race in 2027,” he wrote.
“KTM’s early and clear commitment to the five years of MotoGP after 2026 is positive; it’s the right way to convince investors and all stakeholders of KTM’s serious intentions,” Poncharal said.
However, Dorna and Liberty Media’s hopes of signing the new five-year agreements with the manufacturers Honda, Yamaha, Ducati, Aprilia, and KTM in 2025 have not yet been realized. The motorcycle manufacturers are demanding more say, modelled on the Concorde Agreement in Formula 1 – and significantly more money.
The revenues, profits, and unit sales of car manufacturers are not comparable to those of motorcycle manufacturers, nor are the revenues in MotoGP to those of Formula 1. In Formula 1, around $1 billion a year is distributed among the ten teams, while in MotoGP, Dorna finances the GP teams with €70 to €80 million annually.
The automobile companies operate on a different scale than the motorcycle manufacturers. Last week, Ford decided to write off a $19.5 billion investment in electric mobility models in the US and invest fresh capital in additional combustion engine vehicles. At KTM, a loss of €400 million in its bicycle business in 2024 was enough to deplete its entire equity and file for bankruptcy with €1.8 billion in debt.
While in the MotoGP class, manufacturers like KTM for 2017 and Aprilia for 2022 received the two MotoGP slots for their factory teams free of charge, Liberty Media demanded a significant anti-dilution fee from Michael Andretti, who wanted to enter the F1 World Championship with a new team for some years. By the time of his final rejection the anti-dilution fee reportedly amounted to around $600 million. This was far more than Andretti's initial $200 million offer to compensate teams for lost revenue share. F1 argued that Andretti's proposal (using General Motors/Cadillac power units and low funding) wasn't strong enough to justify diluting prize money, leading to their rejection for 2025. Incidentally, the proposed $200 million anti-dilution fee proposed by Andretti was to be shared among the ten existing F1 teams as a thank you for the new US team being granted permission to join the Formula One grid.
Despite lots of talks and negotiations the wish of the controversial new KTM CEO, Gottfried Neumeister, to find an investor by Christmas to take over 30 percent of the KTM MotoGP project remained, as expected, unfulfilled. "With a 30 percent stake, you don't have much influence," explained a long-time team manager. Serious interested parties like CFMOTO from China were only interested in a 100 percent takeover.
"When I realized that I needed investors for the future, many people called me and said they wanted to buy 30 or 35 percent of Tech3 Racing. Then I thought: What do I do with a partner like that? So I decided: Either I keep 100 percent for the upcoming season and continue running my company as in the past, or I sell the whole team, i.e., 100 percent," Poncharal recounts. "It's difficult to run a company with shareholders. It makes more sense to be the sole owner and be able to make decisions freely."
In the four-stroke MotoGP World Championship, which has existed since 2002, only one team has had two shareholders: the CryptoDATA Aprilia RNF team in 2023, which became insolvent after just under twelve months. The controversial CryptoDATA CEO, Ovidiu Toma, had acquired 60 percent of RNF at the time, while the remaining 40 percent remained in the possession of team principal Razlan Razali. The RNF racing team, along with its two MotoGP slots, was then sold for €3 million to Trackhouse owner Justin Marks.
Tech3 Rider line-up with KTM since 2019
2019: Miguel Oliveira, Hafizh Syahrin
2020: Miguel Oliveira, Iker Lecuona
2021: Danilo Petrucci, Iker Lecuona
2022: Wayne Gardner, Raul Fernández
2023: Pol Espargaró, Augusto Fernández
2024: Pedro Agosta, Augusto Fernández
2025: Enea Bastianini, Maverick Vinales
Tech3 Rider line-up with Yamaha since 2001
2001: Olivier Jacque, Shinya Nakano
2002: Olivier Jacque, Shinya Nakano (replacement: Guintoli)
2003: Norick Abe, Shinya Nakano, who was later replaced by Barros
2004: Marco Melandri, Norick Abe
2005: Colin Edwards, Toni Elias
2006: Carlos Checa, James Ellison
2007: Sylvain Guintoli, Makoto Tamada
2008: Colin Edwards, James Toseland
2009: Colin Edwards, James Toseland
2010: Colin Edwards, Ben Spies
2011: Colin Edwards, Cal Crutchlow
2012: Cal Crutchlow, Andrea Dovizioso
2013: Cal Crutchlow, Bradley Smith
2014: Pol Espargaró, Bradley Smith
2015: Pol Espargaró, Bradley Smith
2016: Pol Espargaró, Bradley Smith
2017: Johann Zarco, Jonas Folger (substitutes: Broc Parkes, Kohta Nozane, Michael van der Mark)
2018: Johann Zarco, Hafizh Syahrin