Is World Superbike’s superstar Razgatlioglu a genuine solution for a MotoGP team?

Toprak Razgatlioglu’s manager Kenan Sofuoglu says “there are teams that want” the Turkish rider in MotoGP next year, despite holding a BMW World Superbike deal to the end of 2025.

The 2025 MotoGP rider market has kicked into life in recent weeks, following Ducati’s bombshell announcement that it would be bringing Marc Marquez into its factory team.

That begun a chain reaction of moves, starting with Jorge Martin signing for Aprilia, and has been followed with Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini penning KTM deals, while Marco Bezzecchi also moves to Aprilia.

Elsewhere, it looks likely 2020 world champion Joan Mir will stay with Honda for two more years – as per Autosport reports – and Pramac seems to be edging ever closer to a Yamaha move in 2025.

In the coming weeks, much of the 2025 grid will likely have fallen into place. So, where does Razgatlioglu fit into the equation?

He has easily been WSBK’s biggest draw in recent years, finally ending Jonathan Rea and Kawasaki’s stranglehold on the series in 2021 when he denied the Ulsterman a seventh successive title.

Aligned with Yamaha at the time, rumblings persisted of Razgatlioglu moving to MotoGP with the Japanese manufacturer.

Razgatlioglu tested the M1 at Jerez early last year and was around a second off the pace of Yamaha’s test rider Cal Crutchlow at the Spanish Grand Prix venue. It was a significant enough test for Yamaha’s top brass to be in attendance, but the underwhelming lap times – albeit with little time to adapt to the bike – cast some doubts.

Hopes of a 2024 MotoGP move were all but ended when Yamaha boss Lin Jarvis told the media in Austin last April that, with the marque unlikely to have a satellite squad for the following season, it couldn’t replace an experienced hand in Franco Morbidelli with a rookie in Razgatlioglu.

In May of that year, Razgatlioglu signed a deal with BMW in WSBK, saying at the time: “While there was an opportunity in MotoGP, I didn’t feel the same connection with the MotoGP bike that I have with the Superbike.”

Now, in June of 2024, Razgatlioglu’s name has become attached to MotoGP again.

“We have a two-year deal with BMW and everything is going very well,” his manager Sofuoglu told Autosport’s OTT platform Motorsport.tv. “It’s going so well that Toprak has started to have serious dreams about…