Somkiat Chantra “crying” after finding out MotoGP future

Somkiat Chantra will become the first rider from Thailand to race in the MotoGP class in 2025, as he steps up from the Moto2 World Championship to race for the LCR Honda team.

Chantra, a two-time Moto2 race winner in the 2022 Indonesian Grand Prix and 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, said he found out he would be a MotoGP rider in the week after this year’s Austrian Grand Prix.

“It was last week when I know that I will go to MotoGP,” he told the MotoGP pre-race press conference ahead of this weekend’s Aragon Grand Prix.

“I’m very happy when I know that I will go to MotoGP for next year, I was so happy. I was crying, calling my mum.”

Chantra, after the announcement of Ai Ogura’s move to the Trackhouse Aprilia team for next season which was made in Austria, is the second rider to announce a move to MotoGP having begun his career in the Asia Talent Cup, which he won in 2016.

“This year was very nice,” he said when shown, during the press conference, a photo of himself taken after he’d won a race at the Asia Talent Cup round held at Buriram in 2016, as a support class to the World Superbike Championship. “This [photo] was in Buriram, also I win in my home race, and it was really nice.”

Thailand, it was recently announced, will also host the opening round of the 2025 MotoGP World Championship, which, it is now confirmed, will be Chantra’s first premier class race, meaning he will have the rare opportunity of beginning his MotoGP career with his home Grand Prix.

“I was living in Pattaya city, it’s my town, it’s quite near Bangkok, like one hour [away],” Chantra said of his childhood in Thailand.

“They have some circuits, and also that time they have the Honda Racing School — you pay like 500 Baht (around £11) and you can join it, you just have to take boots, gloves, and a helmet and you can join the race. First you learn, like a school, and after you can do the race.

“After doing that for one year, Honda take me to do the selection for the Asia Talent Cup in 2014, and when I do selection I was happy that I was inside the 22 riders.

“At that time it was like 600 riders who came to selection there, but I was inside the 22 riders, I was so happy that time. After that I start Asia Talent Cup, CEV, Moto2, and now I’m here.”

Chantra’s entire career on the ‘Road to MotoGP’ and now into MotoGP itself has been under the guidance of HRC, which supplies to bikes to both the Asia Talent Cup and the Junior Talent Team in what is now the JuniorGP series, and which funds the Honda Team Asia setup in which Chantra has spent his entire Moto2 career.

The aforementioned Ogura followed a similar path, but left the Honda stable for next year due to the current technical troubles that Honda is facing, the Japanese manufacturer without a podium since the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix.

Chantra has a plan to prepare for the challenge of stepping up to MotoGP on what, at the moment, is one of its least-competitive machines.

“Aleix Espargaro will be test rider for HRC for next year, and I hope that he will help me,” Chantra said, with Espargaro sat beside him in the press conference. “For sure, Moto2 and MotoGP are different bikes, and also a lot of electronics.

“I think in Valencia we will test, and I will try to learn about [these differences], and also look at the video.”