AUSSIES RACERS | Dream chasers

Australia punches well above its weight on the global racing stage, but the path from promise to podium has never been tougher

Australian motorcycle racers are on the march overseas. This year there are over 120 Aussies across all FIM recognised disciplines licensed to take part in international FIM approved championships. Among them are 45 in road racing, 27 in speedway, 18 in flat track, 11 in motocross, eight in supercross, five each in enduro and desert racing, with two competing in national and world championships trials. There are also women competing in road racing (Tayla Relph), dirt track, speedway and motocross (led by Charli Cannon).

The figure does not include riders who compete in other domestic championships, such as the British Superbikes and various AMA championships on a permanent basis. These riders include Josh Brookes, David Johnson, Jason O’Halloran and Billy McConnell, as well as the Lawrence brothers in the AMA MX championships. Add in additional riders for such events as the ISDE, Motocross de Nations and the recent SpeedwayGP3 for Under 16s with three representatives and there is talent spread across all disciplines.

These figures prove that Australia is making an impact on the international stage that far outweighs its population size of around 28 million and its economy.

Consider that California has a population of 39 million people. The fourth largest economy in the world, this US state is worth around $A6 trillion. Australia ranks 13th with an economy worth $2.12 trillion. Do you think there is any chance California has 130 motorcycle racers competing overseas?

Then compare that with the UK (70 million people/$A5 trillion). It has far less than 100 riders competing internationally, despite being closer to European and world championships than Australia.

The most expensive option

Road racing is the most expensive of the disciplines to achieve international success and this year our 45 reps are competing all the way from MotoGP classes to WorldSBK classes and the Asia Talent Cup. Those numbers are very impressive – but last year there were over 250 FIM licences issued by Motorcycling Australia. No doubt the current economic climate and unrest in the Middle East has had a knock-on effect.

Gone are the days of privateers doing it on the smell of an oily rag. Our racers are competing against cashed-up locals in Europe. There’s a lot of ‘old money’ there that has increased its wealth through the generations and this goes a long way to funding some of the riders, most often through long-established businesses. Today it is big business – and with Liberty coming in this will only increase. It would be nice to think this new ownership would see more money coming into the teams to lessen the cost on rising talent, as these days, in all categories of road racing, it is a case of pay to ride. Wishful thinking?

Right now you may have all the talent in the world but without financial backing you will never make it in the big leagues of Europe.

In Australia the ‘Road to MotoGP’ begins with the Oceania Junior Cup on Yamaha R15s for 11 to 15-year-olds at rounds of the ASBK, and MotoMini on Ohvale GP-style minibikes for 10 to 14-year-olds on go-kart tracks. A season in the OJC for a supplied bike and riding gear is around $10,000. MotoMini is part of a Dorna worldwide initiative, run in Australia by three-time ASBK champion Wayne Maxwell, a private promoter who funds the exercise with participants buying and maintaining their own equipment.

Unlike the ‘good old days’, another dilemma that adds to the conundrum of riding overseas is that the classes in Australian road racing do not reflect those of the GP classes. We no longer have the competitor participation to warrant running those classes, and so if you wish to join the GP ranks, you have to go where the GP bikes play.

The first step is the Asia Talent Cup. This year we have three riders in the championship. If selected, the only expense is the airline tickets and accommodation. The same holds true if selected for the Red Bull Rookies Cup.

grim reality of  modern racing

The extras start when you head into the Junior GP ranks. Here it’s time to ‘pay to ride’, with the investment hopefully leading a rider into the main game of the MotoGP classes.

The asking price for a one-year ride in the Junior World Championships of Moto2, 3 and 4 is in the vicinity of $A300,000 for a reputable team. Lesser-ranked teams may ask for less but have the potential to deliver about the same. Many in the past have been chewed up and spat out by unscrupulous operators who promise the world but fail to deliver, resulting in a massive impact to the bank balance.

That price has a lot to do with your resume, too. Not as many ticks in the resume and the price increases dramatically. So when Aussies head there for the first year, the expense can be brutal. Then you have to add in all the additional logistical expenses.

Most contracts are year by year, so all parties have to be at their peak and operate in the hope of extending the contract. Oh, and did we mention the clause about crash damage?

The kids at the tail of the field in Moto3 GP are paying in the vicinity of $A500,000 a year.

When Harry Voight was exploring the options of a fulltime Moto3 GP ride a few year ago, the initial quote was €400,000 ($A650,000). As his father Stephen explained, “Interestingly enough, Harry’s had a couple Moto2 offers to ride in the last couple of years. Okay. But 600,000 euro? 900,000? Fantic offered him a ride two years ago and he’d just turned 18. I could get in. They wanted 450,000 euro. And they were gonna get a little bit of money, a couple of subsidies and bits and pieces. And then they ring up about a month or so later and say to me, ‘We can’t. We’ve had to pull back our offer. Another rider has come in and offered us another 100,000 Euro on top’.”

This year, four Aussies are competing in the Moto2 Junior World Championship in Europe: Jacob Roulstone (who has also scored a ride with the Idemitsu Honda Asia Team in the Moto2 World Championship), Harry Voight (who is also poised to be the youngest Australian Superbike champion), 2024 Aussie Supersport champion JJ Nahlous and Declan Van Rosmalen.

Levi Russo and Marianos Nikolis are competing in the Moto3 Junior World Championship.

Voight and Roulstone – as well as many other Aussie hopefuls who have had a crack – have travelled a similar path. From dirt track they ventured into road racing, initially with junior road racing in this country and then to Asia and onto Red Bull Rookies.

For Nahlous, this is his first venture into racing a GP-spec bike, so 2026 is a massive learning curve as he commutes back and forth to also represent the Yamaha Racing Team in ASBK.

In 2018, Voight was accepted into the Asia Talent Cup tryouts and was selected. The only problem was he was too young. He was also too young to race in Australia, so as they lived on the Gold Coast, dad Stephen decided to do ride days in Malaysia and Japan to hone Harry’s skills: “We could fly out on a Thursday afternoon after school and could get home in time for breakfast on Sunday morning. With Air Asia it was like $250 a flight, so it was cheaper to do that than go to Phillip Island. It made perfect sense.”

In 2019 Harry did get accepted again for ATC and competed with Jacob Roulstone and Ai Ogura. Many Aussies have been accepted into that path. The latest in the line for this year are Bodie and Jake Paige, along with Judd Plaisted.

MORE AFFORDABLE OPTIONS

At the other end of the expense spectrum is speedway, as the bikes are meticulously governed by rules with not many of the technological advances seen in other disciples. Dirt track is also ‘relatively cheap’, until you start improving engine performance. We have dozens of athletes plying their trade in various leagues and the Speedway GP Series.

Australia really punches above its weight when it comes to speedway, perhaps not surprising as we have an historic relationship with the sport going back to 1923 at West Maitland Showgrounds (NSW).

This year the Speedway World Championship is celebrating its 90th birthday with Australian Lionel Van Praag its first world champion in 1936. The current Speedway GP Series was introduced in 1995.

Sadly, our mainstream media is certainly not jingoistic when it comes to our amazing global speedway success. We have won the Speedway of Nations six times (1976, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2022 and 2025). In solo racing we have won multiple world titles over the decades, with Jason Crump our most successful with three crowns.

Path to speedway fame

There are 15 seeded riders for the SGP series. This year Australia has four riders in the top 15. At season’s end the top six automatically qualify for the main game, with the other nine spots made up from qualifiers. So there is a good chance we may have seven riders in next year’s GP series.

Speedway can be a viable alternative to more expensive forms of motorcycle racing, as Reid Battye found out. After winning a few Australian Junior Dirt Track championships, he started road racing as a teenager in the GP Juniors Australia series in 2016. In 2017 he won the Australian 300cc championship and was soon promoted to a Suzuki Supersport machine. An enforced hiatus saw him join the RAAF but when he was informed that the RAAF wouldn’t let him go racing, he quit the force. “After that I had a few test rides on a Superbike for an Aussie team but they were asking for $100k,” he said.

“I’ve always wanted to race motorbikes professionally and speedway was an option as I didn’t want to stop racing just because road racing was too expensive for me. I went to Craig Boyce’s Speedway Experience Day and that was it. I started going okay and I won the NT title, which secured my visa so I could race in the UK.

“It probably cost about 20 grand to get myself over there and set up. But my deal is actually pretty good. When I got there, I was given two bikes. I took one engine over and I was gifted another motor and I maintain all my own equipment.

“It’s decent prize money that increases the closer you get to the finals. I am still only 25, so I have plenty of time to race in the world championships where many of the guys are over 30.”

Battye’s ultimate goal is to get into the Grand Prix series and reach the top of the sport.

“But I’ll just take my time in the way of getting there,” he said. And, yes, he won’t go broke doing it.

Another alternative option is dirt track, and for that all eyes are on the USA. One Aussie making a career out of it is Tom Drane from Forbes, NSW.

He’s another rider who had a successful go at road racing in Australia but went back to dirt track and is under the umbrella of the famous Hayden racing family and lives in Kentucky.

His younger brother Sam is doing both road and dirt track while making his way through the ranks in the junior classes.

Also competing in the US, as well as racing in the Asia Talent Cup, are Bodie and Jake Paige. Bodie is making a real name for himself having last year already secured two Nicky Hayden AMA Horizon Awards in both road racing and dirt track. The event is at the Amateur national held over a week every July on four different tracks. Bodie won that, then later in the year at Daytona he won the road race version on a Suzuki GSX-R750.

The Paige lads can juggle these commitments because the next round of the Asia Talent Cup isn’t until later in the year.

Bodie and Jake have found opportunities in the American paddock to progress but it does come at a cost the higher up the success chain they climb.

“If you don’t have access to all the training techniques and all that stuff you are way behind,” said father Ben. “Which is on top of the $200,000 that you’re spending. You are going to spend that again in training over there. Every kid trains every day. They are all so super hungry and determined.

“You’re living the life of a professional at 14, 15, 16 years old. But not getting paid – you’re paying to do it.”

Despite this the US is more affordable than Europe because success will bring sponsors and teams out of the woodwork with money. It’s a different attitude.

For example, Wayne Rainey is taking a watching brief on Bodie, a young blond hotshot like he once was.

Australian women are also doing well over in the US, this time in the motocross scene. After two rounds of the USA Women’s MX Championship, Charli Cannon sits just four points behind the championship leader, while Taylah McCutcheon ended up on the podium in only her second weekend of MX Championship racing.

Both MX and AMA Flat Track are an expensive business at the highest level and there’s no illusions about what the expenses are for a year or two until you start getting a winning profile.

SCHOOL’S IN

School work is a major concern as the number of riders who have tried and not succeeded far outweighs the ones who have climbed to the top of any motorcycle racing discipline.

First it was home schooling but technology has moved on for kids chasing their sporting dreams as in this ever-changing technological age online schooling is a great option.

The Paige brothers have both gone down this route. “It’s their third year of online schooling,” Ben explained. “It’s easier than homeschooling but it’s still got challenges. It’s not that easy to sit on a flight or in a van; it’s not that easy to do school work. And they are both teenagers who have just turned 15 and 16. It’s not as easy as you’d think to concentrate and focus when there’s too many other distractions around them.”

Stephen Voight went down a similar path with Harry: “He did online schooling as there was a Catholic school in Brisbane that had an online course.”

The course was focused to cater for pupils with a commitment to their sport.

“There were actually quite a few kids overseas swimming, playing hockey, playing all different sports around the world,” said Stephen. “So he would log in and they would do lessons online, together, and then he would have a list of work he had to do after. The tuition was actually quite good as they would video the lesson. So Harry could go back and replay it and then just go through his math or his English or his geography, whatever he was doing at the time.”

Good education is vital as racers don’t race forever.

SACRIFICES PARENTS MAKE

The majority of families that undertake the mammoth task of competing overseas often have their own business, so it’s a matter of juggling who goes with whom for how long and who stays to earn the money and make sure the business is ticking over in order to pay for it all.

Stephen Voight has his own transport company, so he could be in Asia or Europe with Harry and still conduct his business with his wife at home: “I can still run my part of the business through night-time; through emails and just keeping things moving. All my machines, they’re GPS trucks, you know. Cameras in the yard at work, so I knew who was doing what.

“I could send emails and do orders with Sharon and some people didn’t even know whether I was in the office, sitting around the corner, or sitting across the other side of the world. That’s a good thing about the internet these days as you can be anywhere in the world and still working but it is still a challenge. It’s getting easier now as Harry can look after himself. But competing in Europe, whatever it cost to be a part of a team, you are going to spend about the same by just being there. It’s airfares, a place to live, the travel to the events, gym. You have to buy a couple of bikes for training as the kids in Europe are training every day.”

It’s obvious the racing is just the end result of a lot of preparation and expense.

to sum up

The whole point of this feature isn’t to scare off current and prospective competitors wanting to reach the highest level. It’s a reality check and a bit of an insight into what’s involved and the options available. The good news is the sheer number of athletes across all the disciplines and that many of them are moving up the ladder. At AMCN, we wish every Aussie chasing it overseas – and every young rider dreaming of following in their tyre tracks – nothing but success on the road ahead. 

PETER DOYLE, MA CEO

One man with a lifetime of experience in race paddocks is Motorcycling Australia CEO Peter Doyle, as his father, Neville, was a doyen of tuning in the 1970s and 80s, with Peter following in his footsteps. Doyle told AMCN: “It was way different back then as there are now plenty of opportunities and pathways.

“When Mat Mladin started (1992), riders couldn’t get on a road bike until age 16. They ran in motocross and dirt track up until 16. Then they would get onto road bikes. If you go back earlier, I think it was 18 years old to road race.

“They usually did a couple of years of 250 proddies in Australia. And then they were right in the big league. That was how it worked back then. Now you can get on a road race bike, what, at seven or eight, on a go-kart track? So, absolutely there’s a lot more pathways.

“I think Asia being on our doorstep is cost-effective. You can be there in six to eight hours, depending where you’re going. It’s the simplest pathway.

“Back in the day, the pathway was people giving riders something. Go back to Kawasaki, when we hired Rob Phillis and Aaron Slight. We’d give them a fee because it was in our best interest to try and, you know, win. We wanted those guys to come through and ride superbikes. We had guys go straight from here and win a Grand Prix on 500cc GP bikes (Kevin Magee).

“You’re never going to see a program linked together around the world that will bring the absolute best of the best through. Because it’s always going to be subject to people with a chequebook.

“We have some highly talented kids right now. It’s whether they get an opportunity or whether some Aussie billionaire is going to stand up and help them get that opportunity. But it’s a very different world now. When we were all connected (in the 1970s-80s-90s), I quite often called Japan and we’d talk to my counterparts there – but all that’s gone now because Dorna has got control of most of the elite level pathways.”

PETER CLIFFORD and the ROOKIES

Since its inception in 2007, the Red Bull Rookies Cup has produced a multitude of world champions in all three classes. To look through the names is an encyclopedia of MotoGP riders with current racer Johann Zarco the winner of the first Rookies Cup.

In its fledgling years, junior programs around the world were minimal but have steadily increased, so it is only natural that competition for those coveted spots has really heated up.

Peter Clifford (pictured above with 2011 Cup winner Lorenzo Baldassarri) has been at the coalface of the RBRC since it started and explained to AMCN: “The bottom line is, yes, the level has gone up all round. Whether it’s the level of everything, the level of the applicants, the level of the kids at the selection event, or the level of the kids in the Rookies Cup.

“When Johann Zarco left after winning the first cup in 2007, he couldn’t go straight into Moto3 (the class didn’t replace 125GP until 2012). He struggled for a few years until he worked his way into it. And he commented that at the time the Rookies Cup was not sufficient preparation for going into Moto3. However, he was our first GP winner on a 125.

“But clearly it is sufficient preparation now because if you are a star, like Pedro Acosta, you come straight out of winning the Rookies Cup and win the Moto3 world championship in your first year. And if you’re Max Quiles, you’re too young to start your Moto3 season, you miss a few races but you still win a grand prix in your first year and, fingers crossed, you’re hoping to win the world championship in your second year. So that’s just how the level has increased over those 20 years.

“We have about 115 riders at the selection with three full days watching them on track. There is no real opportunity to assess them off track, but in saying that I brief the groups before each session so I am talking to seven or eight riders and taking questions. I also often talk to them after sessions to see if there is anything I can help them with and we make it clear that we are very approachable to ask questions.

“We are looking mostly on-track to see how the riders explore the possibilities of the track and the motorcycle. We want to see them experimenting and improving. The four of us – Gusti Auinger, Dani Ribalta, Harald Bartol and myself – have well over 200 years of experience involved in racing between us.”

2026 FIM Licence Holders

ROAD RACING – 45 riders

SPEEDWAY – 27 RIDERS

FLAT TRACK – 18 RIDERS

MOTOCROSS - 11 RIDERS

ENDURO – 5 riders

RALLY – 5 riders

SUPERCROSS – 8 riders

TRIALS – 2 riders