The MotoGP grid is dominated by Spanish and Italian riders; that's just a fact. Out of the 22-rider lineup, 15 are from either Spain or Italy, making up 68% of the grid. But Liberty Media, MotoGP's new owner, wants to change this, and I couldn't disagree more with the means the company is going about it—passports over meritocracy.
Liberty has introduced new financial incentives that'll be available from 2026 to 2028 to teams and riders that meet certain criteria, with the intention of diversifying the nationalities that we see on the grid from Moto3 onwards.
The financial incentive works like this: Any teams that hire and win with riders from countries that have an officially reported population of more than 100,000 people and have less than 10% representation in the MotoGP paddock—between Moto3, Moto2, and MotoGP—get up to €200,000 ($233,912). That's a very long-winded way of saying 'any nationality that's not Spanish or Italian' because they're the only two nationalities that it excludes.
