Team owner Aki Ajo loses Moto2 dominators Remy Gardner and Raul Fernandez to MotoGP Tech3 KTM. But the search for successors has already begun: Sérgio Garcia can take Fernandez’s place in 2022!
Aki Ajo’s team’s dominance of orange bikes has been insolent, from race to race in 2021, from qualifying to races. In the first nine Grandes Pémios, Ajo achieved a total of eleven of the 18 possible victories (5x Moto3, 6x Moto2) in the Moto3 and Moto2 classes, plus a total of 21 podium places (7 in Moto3, 14 in Moto2).
In addition, Ajo Motorsport (95 GP victories so far) is the world championship leader in both classes. In Moto3, rookie Pedro Acosta, aged 17 (4 GP victories in 2021) already has a 48-point advantage over second, Sergio Garcia (GASGAS).
In the Moto2 championship, Remy Gardner (3 GP victories plus 5 podium places) has a 31-point advantage over his teammate Raul Fernandez, who, as a class rookie like Acosta, far surpassed all expectations (3 wins, 2 x second and 1 x third.
No wonder KTM considers yet another Moto2 season for Raúl Fernández as a waste of time. After Oliveira, Binder and Gardner, he is the next KTM MotoGP Academy rider to be promoted to the premier class. Pedro Acosta will certainly be his natural replacement in Aki Ajo’s Moto2 team.
Recalling what happened in the past, this winning streak takes us back to 2017, the year Honda confiscated the top seven places in the Moto3 World Championship, making a double in the next 250cc class with Jorge Martin and Fabio Di Giannantonio in 2018, and the third in 2019 with Lorenzo Dalla Porta.
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From then on, the Austrians took charge of things, after a change of concept that had been talked about a short time before: “We have to make sure that the talents of KTM from the Rookies Cup are not all attracted by Honda to the Championship of the Moto3 World” said KTM race director Pit Beirer in 2017.
