“Really positive meeting” helps under fire MotoGP rider to best 2025 result at Brno

Trackhouse MotoGP rider Raul Fernandez says his run to a best result of the season at the Czech Grand Prix was a direct result of a “really positive meeting” after the German Grand Prix.

The fourth-year MotoGP rider has been under pressure to improve his form on the satellite Aprilia in 2025, with the Italian brand’s CEO Massimo Rivola stating recently that Raul Fernandez has underwhelmed.

After a lacklustre start to the campaign, his results have steadily improved, with Fernandez scoring top 10 finishes in six of the last seven grands prix.

Qualifying on the second row at Brno, the 24-year-old finished fifth in the 21-lap grand prix to secure his first MotoGP top five since Valencia 2023.

He says this was largely helped by a meeting he had with Trackhouse team boss Davide Brivio, following a tough German Grand Prix that saw him struggle from 16th on the grid to ninth.

“I’m really happy, of course,” Fernandez said on Sunday at Brno.

“We are working so well, step by step I feel better with the bike, with the team.

“But I think this weekend we have two important keys: the first one was the qualifying.

“Of course, the last seven races I was six times in the top 10. So, it is a signal we are working well. Step by step I feel good.

“But at least the qualifying makes this small difference, because I was fighting from the beginning with Pecco, with Fabio.

“So, it is the key and we have to understand how to improve our qualifying for the future.

“And the second key was that I had a really positive meeting with Davide on Thursday.

“I improved a lot and I understood a lot of things. Of course, I think we are quite young and we need to understand every day we can improve as a person and as a rider.

“So, basically it helped me a lot. I tried to be focused on my job, I tried to do my 100% but also I understand that day by day we can improve and we learn something.”

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Though he has a contract for next year, the flashes of speed from rookie team-mate Ai Ogura and a recent test at Aragon for Moto2 points leader Manuel Gonzalez has put a question mark over Fernandez’s place at Trackhouse.

Brivio told the MotoGP world feed earlier in the Brno weekend that the Gonzalez test has changed nothing in this regard.

“Not really the pressure from the Gonzalez test,” he said.

“That was not a big deal, from this point of view. But just we started the season with injury and struggling to stay in the top 15, top 10.

“But since Le Mans, we had improvements, constantly in the top 10.

“Last weekend at the Sachsenring was not good, but we talked about it and also to stay focused on what we have, try to use as much as possible what we’ve got in the garage.”