Christian Pupulin, who serves as Jack Miller‘s technical manager at KTM, will join Honda next year and replace Giacomo Guidotti on Luca Marini‘s side of the garage, Autosport has learned.
With the rider market having now settled down after some bombshell announcements around the Italian GP, the focus has shifted to the leading engineers on the grid.
With the exception of Fabiano Sterlacchini, who has not renewed his contract with KTM for family reasons, the common trend is for engineers and technicians to move from one garage to another and follow the riders they currently work with.
However, that’s not the case with Pupulin, who joined KTM a year and a half ago having spent almost a lifetime at Ducati, where he worked with top-level riders such as Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso.
It has emerged that the Australian will not remain with KTM next year and will join Honda in 2025 to begin a new role as the engineer in charge of Marini’s bike.
Since starting a new chapter with HRC at the beginning of 2024, Marini has been working with Guidotti, who joined the Japanese marque brand in 2017 and has since engineered the likes of Dani Pedrosa, Joan Mir and Takaaki Nakagami, the last-named with the satellite LCR team.
Luca Marini, Repsol Honda Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
When Marini was in talks to join Honda last winter, he asked to work with Santi Hernandez, who until that point had been a key figure in Marc Marquez’s entourage. Marquez had tried to take Hernandez with him, but it was a move that ultimately failed.
At that point, Mir asked Honda to assign Hernandez to him, a request which the Japanese manufacturer agreed to.
Marini ended up working with Guidotti for 2024, but will have a new engineer in the form of Pupulin next year.
The change of brand for ‘Pipi’, as the aeronautical engineer is popularly known in the paddock, will not be the only major shuffle in 2025.
As previously reported, Marquez will inherit Marco Rigamonti as his track engineer when he replaces Enea Bastianini at the factory Ducati team next year.
Bastianini will move to Tech3 KTM, where he will be reunited with Alberto Giribuola, who was in charge of running his satellite Ducati bike at Gresini in 2022.
Enea Bastianini, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Autosport also expects Jose Manuel Cazeaux to assist Maverick Vinales on the other side of the Tech3 garage. Vinales had recruited Cazeaux to…
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