In this second part, we mostly look at riders who will contend for points but not the championship although Moto3 has been known to spring a few surprises over the years.
MAPFRE Team Mahindra
Rider: Francesco Bagnaia
Race Number: 21
Nationality: Italian
Date of Birth: 14/1/97
2015 Championship Position: 14th
Debut: Qatar 2013 Moto3 Races: 51
Highest Finish: 3rd France 2015
For the first time in his career to date, Bagnaia stays on the same machinery for a second season with Mahindra after previously having single seasons on Honda and Kalex bikes. That consistency should help him build on a 2015 that saw him regularly in the top ten. His debut season for the San Carlo Team Italia squad was uneventful with no points and a best finish of 16th in Malaysia (missing out on one point by just over a tenth of a second). He was recruited to Valentino Rossi’s SKY Racing VR46 team in 2014 and found success with a tenth place on his debut for them in Qatar and season best of fourth at Le Mans taking him to 16th in the standings as Romano Fenati’s teammate. He then moved to Jorge Martinez’s Mapfre Mahindra team in 2015 where he will remain for 2016. Bagnaia built on his impressive 2014 with ninth in the opening race and going one better at Le Mans to grab a maiden podium. Overall the season was impressive given the machinery he was on and with fourth at Mugello, seventh at Jerez and eighth at Misano he was able to finish as top Mahindra rider in the standings in 14th place.
Rider: Jorge Martin
Race Number: 88
Nationality: Spanish
Date of Birth: 29/1/98
2015 Championship Position: 17th
Debut: Qatar 2015 Moto3 Races: 18
Highest Finish: 7th Aragon 2015
Martin along with Bagnaia is retained from last season’s three man squad as the team drops to two bikes and Juanfran Guevara departs. He was the 2014 Red Bull Rookies champion before making his Grand Prix debut in Qatar last season for Mahindra. Twelve points finishes from eighteen races is a good return for a debut season and he finished 18th overall, third best rookie (behind Jorge Navarro and Fabio Quartararo) and second best Mahindra rider.
Drive M7 SIC Racing Team Honda
Rider: Adam Norrodin
Race Number: 7
Nationality: Malaysian
Date of Birth: 13/6/98 Moto3 Races: 0
The 17-year-old was unimpressive in the 2015 FIM CEV Moto3 Championship scoring just four points in twelve races. His best finish was fourteenth at Albacete and his final position was 30th in the standings.
Rider: Jakub Kornfeil
Race Number: 84
Nationality: Czech
Date of Birth: 8/4/93
2015 Championship
Position: 12th
Debut: San Marino 2009 Moto3 Races: 109
Highest Finish: 2nd Great Britain 2015
Last season was Kornfeil’s seventh in the lower tier of Grand Prix racing and his most successful as he finally secured his first podium at Silverstone followed by another at Valencia. His highest championship position came back in 2013 though when he finished 11th. In his debut six races in 2009, he scored no points as he replaced Alexis Masbou at Loncin. His next two seasons were the last two of the 125cc era as he raced Aprilias for first Racing Team Germany followed by Ongetta-Centro Seta. He was a regular points scorer especially in 2011 but his best result was fifth at his home round in 2010. He stayed with Ongetta-Centro in Moto3 in 2012 as the team used an FTR-Honda chassis to take him to 15th in the championship (his best result was again at Brno when he finished sixth). His switch to RW Racing in 2013 took him to 11th in the standings when he also equalled his career best at the time of fifth at Jerez. In 2014, he moved to the Spanish Calvo Team and scored more points than the previous season with a career high of 97 points despite finishing 12th overall. He scored another three fifth place finishes as it seemed like he would never break into to top four. He finally got his two podiums with Drive M7 Sic in 2015 and remains with the team for 2016 as he hunts down his first win. As he turns 23 years old in April he is one of the older riders in the field.
Outox Reset Drink Team Mahindra
Rider: Darryn Binder
Race Number:40
Nationality: South African
Date of Birth: 21/1/98
2015 Championship Position: Not Classified
Debut: Qatar 2015 Moto3 Races: 18
Highest Finish: 16th Czech Republic 2015
Younger brother to Red Bull KTM rider Brad Binder, Darryn goes into 2016 for a second season with the team that gave him his debut in 2015. He nearly scored a point at Brno but was 1.4 seconds away from Philipp Oettl in 15th place. He will hope for a better season in 2016.
Rider: Karel Hanika
Race Number: 98
Nationality: Czech
Date of Birth: 14/4/96
2015 Championship Position: 18th
Debut: Qatar 2014
Moto3 Races: 36
Highest Finish: 7th Argentina 2015
The 2013 Red Bull Rookies champion has spent two seasons at Red Bull Ajo KTM but never quite lived up to the promise he’d shown previously. In both 2014 and 2015, he finished 18th in the standings with 44 and 43 points respectively. His best result was seventh in Argentina last year when he also finished eighth at Assen and Motegi. In the same season though he finished outside the points and indeed outside the top 20 in five races which showed his overall inconsistency. He was handed five penalty points following a clash with Juanfran Guevara after the chequered flag of the Jerez race and had to start the Le Mans round from the pit lane after those points were added to two he already held. Guevara fractured his collarbone in the resulting crash but Hanika maintains it was never his intention to knock the Spaniard off, only to discuss a number of moves towards the end of the race. He certainly talks like he learned his lesson from the incident so let’s hope that’s the case. After losing his Red Bull ride he now looks for a fresh start with Outox Reset Drink Team Mahindra.
Team Laglisse KTM Rider: Maria Herrera
Race Number:6
Nationality: Spanish
Date of Birth: 26/8/96
2015 Championship Position: 29th
Debut: Aragon 2013
Moto3 Races: 22
Highest Finish: 11th Australia 2015
With Ana Carasco missing from the 2016 roster it leaves Maria as the only female rider in the field. Last season was her first full season after four wildcard rides and she scored points in three races; 15th at Catalunya, 13th at Aragon and even better 11th at Philip Island. She remains with Team Laglisse for 2016 and I have to say the thing about Maria is that she’s a good rider overall, not just a good female rider.
Rider: Lorenzo Dalla Porta
Race Number: 48
Nationality: Italian
Date of Birth: 22/6/97
2015 Championship Position: 25th
Debut: Indianapolis 2015
Moto3 Races: 9
Highest Finish: 8th Great Britain 2015
Dalla Porta raced the last nine rounds of the 2015 season for the Laglisse team and is retained for 2016. He finished eighth in his third ride at Silverstone in the rain and followed that up with eleventh in the mixed conditions at Misano. Unfortunately he didn’t get in the points again but looks a promising rider for the future. He continued to compete in the 2015 FIM CEV Moto3 Championship at the same time and finished ninth overall.
Honda Team Asia
Rider: Hiroki Ono
Race Number: 76
Nationality: Japanese
Date of Birth: 15/7/92
2015 Championship Position: 21st
Debut: Japan 2008
Moto3 Races: 24
Highest Finish: 8th Jerez 2011 & Valencia 2015
Despite making his world championship debut eight years ago last season was classed as Ono’s rookie season. The 23-year-old had previously made three starts as a wildcard and four races at the start of the 2011 season on a KTM run by Caretta Technology Forward Team until he lost his ride to Alexis Masbou. As the third Leopard Honda rider in 2015, he was nowhere near the same pace as his championship challenging teammates Danny Kent and Efren Vazquez. He finished in the points on just six occasions, the highest of which was eighth in the final race of the season and equalling his previous best from 2011. He now switches to the Honda Team Asia squad that ran Takaaki Nakagami and Azlan Shah in Moto2 last season and for whom he has previously raced in the 2013 Japanese Road Race Championship, the 2013 and 2014 Spanish National Motorcycle Championship (CEV) and his 2013and 2014 wildcard rides in Moto3.
Rider: Khairul Idham Pawi
Race Number: 89
Nationality: Malaysia
Date of Birth: 20/9/98
2015 Championship Position: Not classified
Debut: Aragon 2015
Moto3 Races: 1
Highest Finish: 25th Aragon 2015
Pawi made his debut at the Aragon round last season for Honda Team Asia and qualified 34th of the 35 riders before finishing 25th in front of the only other runners Davide Pizzoli (a fellow wildcard) and Ana Carasco. He spent the season racing for the same team in the FIM CEV Moto3 Junior World Championship where he finished a credible sixth overall, picking up three podiums early in the season in the process. He’s in very good company now though and will likely take the season to settle in and take stock but could be a decent prospect in years to come.
Ongetta-Rivacold Honda
Rider: Niccolo Antonelli
Race Number: 23
Nationality: Italian
Date of Birth: 23/2/96
2015 Championship Position: 5th
Debut: Qatar 2012
Moto3 Races: 69
Race Wins: 2
Antonelli won his first race in a thriller at Brno in August of last year after also taking pole position but the top six were covered by less than a second and in true Moto3 fashion, all fifteen points scorers crossed the line within seven seconds of the winner. Before that dramatic win, he’d never been on the podium before but followed it up with a brace of third place finishes at Silverstone and Misano. Two races later he took his second ever race win at Motegi but this time from second on the grid and finishing with a comfortable one-second lead. In his first three seasons, he raced for Gresini (at first with San Carlo sponsorship and then GO&FUN) and gained a reputation as a regular retiree. Race weekends would see plenty of action where Antonelli was picking himself out of the gravel whether it be in the race, qualifying or practice. He hardly looked anything special with 14th in the championship the best he could muster. Last season though, the switch to Ongetta-Rivacold (who he stays with for 2016) appears to have been the making of him. Gone were the silly errors and avoidable falls and instead he was busy collecting regular points. In the ten races before that Brno win, he was no lower than ninth in seven of them. He finished fifth in the standings and is considered to be a possible contender for the 2016 crown with Danny Kent, Miguel Oliveira and Efren Vazquez all stepping up to Moto2.
Rider: Jules Danilo
Race Number: 95
Nationality: French
Date of Birth: 18/5/95
2015 Championship Position: 26th
Debut: France 2013
Moto3 Races: 40
Highest Finish: 11th Malaysia 2015
He had four wildcard rides in 2013 but raced his first full season in 2014, scoring just two championship points from a 14th place finish at Aragon on a Mahindra run by Ambrogio Racing alongside Brad Binder. While the South African finished on the podium twice and earned himself a ride on a Red Bull KTM it was Ongetta-Rivacold that offered Danilo a ride alongside Antonelli and the pair remain together in 2016. He scored points in four races but rarely impressed.
