The arrival of Liberty Media, the North American giant that already owns Formula 1, in MotoGP has triggered an earthquake whose shockwaves continue to shake the paddock. With the acquisition of 84% of Dorna, the company is imposing an agenda that looks more like a marketing rebranding operation than a respectful vision of the sport's history.
From Montmelo et MisanoThe tone is set: a massive strengthening of the marketing department, ceremonies copied from F1 with a common anthem for all the drivers. But behind this glitz, a worrying reality sets in: Moto2 and Moto3 are relegated to the rank of extras.
The decisions are clear, brutal, and border on revisionism:
Reduction in space for the Moto2 and Moto3 teams, now relegated to temporary tents to leave more room for the MotoGP structures.
Guidelines for broadcasters: promote only MotoGP, to the detriment of the training categories.
And above all, a shock decision: From this season onwards, titles won outside of 500cc/MotoGP are no longer included in the official riders' list of achievements.
Immediate consequence: Marc Marquez, who is about to win what would be his ninth world title, would now only be recognized for seven crowns. The same goes for Valentino Rossi, artificially reduced from nine to seven titles, or even Giacomo Agostini, stripped of almost half of its 15 crowns. Worse still: entire legends like Angel grandson (12+1 titles) are simply erased from official history.
Liberty Media: an assumed historical falsification
This choice is not trivial: it is for Liberty Media to focus all the spotlight on the "premier class" and marginalize decades of small-cylinder competition. In short, rewriting history to align MotoGP with F1's economic model: a premium, sanitized product, focused on a single category and calibrated to attract global sponsors.
But this "corporate" vision clashes head-on with the DNA of motorcycling. Since the 1950s, Moto2 and Moto3 (and their 125, 250, and 350 cc ancestors) have been the natural breeding ground for champions. Erasing their titles means erasing the trajectory of icons who built the legend of this sport.
The reaction from the paddock was swift. Current and retired drivers denounced a gross manipulation that transformed the MotoGP into a "show without memory." Fans, for their part, are crying betrayal. The phrase keeps coming up in discussions: "history is not meant to be rewritten by owners."
Instead of reinforcing the legacy, Liberty Medium takes the risk of fracturing its own audience, by opposing the new era of globalized spectacle to the living tradition that has made MotoGP a unique sport.
