Max Biaggi bids farewell to Moto3: a move to MotoGP with Aprilia in 2023?

The 2022 world championship will come to an end with the upcoming Valencia race and then it’s time to plan for 2023. At the end of the Sepang race, in which McPhee-Sasaki scored a fantastic double, Biaggi announced the team’s retirement from Moto3 and an intention to focus on other projects. And so what exactly does Max Biaggi have in store? We try to put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand what the Italian might have planned for 2023.

The tiff with Peter Oettl

In September, colleagues at Speedweek highlighted the controversy between Peter Oettl and Max Biaggi regarding who is the actual owner of the Max Racing Team. A debate that has gone on since 2018 in fact, the year in which the pair entered into partnership to create the team (which competed in CEV Moto3 at that time). During the course of this year, however, things got really heated, to the point that both parties presented their evidence to IRTA to clarify the identity of the true owner. The selection committee tasked with checking the documentation deemed Biaggi to be the owner, in that Max served as the team’s guarantor. The Italian paid for the entire structure out of his own pocket, signing contracts with Husqvarna and Sterilgarda as well as with Sasaki and McPhee for 2023.

But the dispute didn’t end there. Oettl has entered into partnership with IntactGP and Liqui-Moly for the Husqvarna team in Moto3 and Moto2, essentially leaving Biaggi with no choice but to announce the end of the adventure for the Max Racing Team in Moto3.

A move to Moto2 or a jump straight to MotoGP?

The natural evolution for Max Biaggi’s team would be a move to Moto2 before progressing to MotoGP but the Italian likes a challenge and so the six-time world champion is considering a double leap, straight to MotoGP. Max Biaggi, as we well know, is an Aprilia ambassador and is often in the garage of the team headed up by Massimo Rivola. In 2023, Aprilia will have a satellite team that is currently linked to Yamaha, or rather WithU RNF.

So what does Max Biaggi have to do with the team headed up by Razlan Razali? It’s simple. The team’s sponsor WithU has bid farewell to MotoGP, making things more than a little complicated for both Razali and Aprilia. And this is where Biaggi would come in with historic sponsor Sterilgarda, which would be ready to serve as the team’s main sponsor, carrying on the partnership project between Aprilia and Razali’s RNF, and with Max BIaggi as the Noale satellite squad’s bona fide team manager next season.

Traslated by Heather Watson