MotoGP's future arrives on a closed circuit on Monday. The day after the Czech Grand Prix, a small group of current riders will roll out of the Brno pit lane on the 850cc prototypes that will define the championship from 2027 — the first time race riders have sampled the machinery that replaces the 1000cc era.
The rule package is the biggest technical reset MotoGP has seen in years: smaller 850cc engines, the banned ride-height devices gone, reduced aerodynamics, and Pirelli replacing Michelin as the sole tyre supplier. With only a handful of prototype bikes and tyre sets available, each manufacturer is limited to roughly two riders, and that scarcity has turned a private test into a politically loaded selection headache.
Ducati's choice is the cleanest. The factory has nominated reigning world champion Marc Marquez and Gresini's Fermin Aldeguer — the only two riders who will still be on Desmosedicis next season. Aprilia has been just as decisive in the other direction, telling Crash.net that only championship leader Marco Bezzecchi, the team's lone confirmed 2027 rider, will take part. That leaves outgoing team-mate Jorge Martin, bound for Yamaha, with no run on the future RS-GP.
Everyone else is wrestling with the same problem: do you hand next year's secrets to a rider who is about to leave? All five official teams are making at least one rider change for 2027, with KTM, Yamaha and Honda set to field all-new factory line-ups. KTM, facing the most complicated picture of the lot, said it could not confirm its Brno test riders.
Honda's case is the strangest. LCR rookie Diogo Moreira is the only active Honda rider signed for 2027, yet HRC looks set to lean on current riders Joan Mir and Luca Marini — both of whom are leaving — to develop the RC214V. As Motorsport.com noted, that would be a genuine anomaly: never in the MotoGP era has a rider switching manufacturers been given access to the bike under development. Mir is heading to Gresini and Ducati, and Honda has still asked him to ride.
His own LCR team principal, Lucio Cecchinello, made clear the rookie he runs is not first in the queue.
"At the moment we haven't received a final decision from Honda yet," Cecchinello told GPone.com. "We have made Diogo available [for the 850cc test], but the latest information we've received indicates that he's not a priority for HRC at the moment."
Cecchinello expects the leaving-rider dilemma to be a recurring one across the grid, and he understands why teams might accept it.
"It's a situation that involves practically all the teams," he said. "However, I don't rule out the possibility that, for example, Quartararo could test the Yamaha, because that's important data for the manufacturer to collect."
Yamaha has yet to declare its hand. Toprak Razgatlioglu is locked in for 2027, but the data argument that Cecchinello floated could still see Fabio Quartararo — on his way to Honda — climb aboard for the manufacturer's benefit. Honda's test rider Takaaki Nakagami is also available, which could leave just one HRC race rider on track.
The stakes are higher than a normal shakedown. Pirelli's MotoGP director Giorgio Barbier has said the riders who test at Brno and the September session at Spielberg will hold a real advantage going into 2027, with the Italian firm leaning heavily on factory feedback to finalise its compounds. There will be no fans, no media and no official lap times on Monday — but the first real read on who is adapting fastest to MotoGP's new era starts there. The next 850cc test for race riders follows the Austrian Grand Prix in mid-September, before the restrictions lift entirely at Valencia on 1 December.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/motogps-850cc-era-begins-marquez-bezzecchi-lead-brno-test). Visit for full coverage.*