The MotoGP™ junior series has been running since 2007 and has become the proven path for the sport’s top stars through the three world championship classes Moto3™, Moto2™ and MotoGP™.

The former pocket hero first came to attention in 2008 after climbing the career ladder in his native Spain. In just his sixth race, at the age of 15, he became the youngest rider ever to stand on the podium at world level. In 2009, he rode for his second year with the Red Bull KTM Motorsport team, taking two more podiums before taking the 125cc (now Moto3™) title in 2010. The rest of his career, as they say, is history.

A sport like motorcycle racing is not cheap and it has become even more expensive since the global financial crash of 2008. Riders like Márquez only come along once in a generation and he was lucky to have the support of those who believed in his talent and led him to the World Championship.

He proved his talent in the right series, in front of the right people, at the right time in the global economy. Since then, such scenarios have become harder to achieve. That’s where the Red Bull Rookies Cup comes in. It helps ensure that talented young drivers don’t fall through the cracks, as they only have to pay the cost of travelling to the events.

Brad Binder and Pedro Acosta are two of the drivers whose careers were shaped by the Rookies Cup.

He stayed the maximum three years drivers are allowed in the Rookies class and three seasons on world-level circuits. Showcasing himself in front of the Grand Prix teams seven weekends a year, he was exactly what a “slow-blooming” talent like Binder needed. “I think the turning point for us was when we got into the Rookies Cup,” he says, looking back on his career. “I got better as I got older. As a kid, especially at the start of the Rookies, I wasn’t very good.”

Several podium finishes and a win were enough to earn him a promotion to the Moto3™ championship in 2012. His skills continued to develop and, having been on the KTM factory radar since his time in the Red Bull Rookies Cup, he was brought into the prestigious Red Bull KTM Ajo team in 2015. A year later, he took the Moto3™ world title.

Pedro Acosta’s father was a fisherman and his mother worked in the school kitchen. The Spanish star speaks openly about how he would not race without the Red Bull Rookies Cup: “I didn’t have enough money to race in other championships. It was necessary to enter a series like this: easier for the guys, super cheap and also the same bikes and opportunities for everyone.”

MotoGP™ fans will be familiar with Acosta’s rapid rise through the World Championship ranks. He won his second race in Moto3™ and took the overall championship in his rookie season in 2020. Two years later he took the Moto2™ title and this season he was on the MotoGP™ podium in just his second weekend.

This brings us to the current newcomers to the World Cup.

Since then, he has remained in the JuniorGP World Championship category, held in Spain and Portugal – the same championship that Marc Márquez won in the late 2000s. Strong placings and regular battles at the front of the field have seen ‘8-Ball Eddie’ move up to Moto3™ once he reaches the required minimum age of 18 in September. He will debut in Lombok, Indonesia and will also be racing in 2025. Racing on a paradise island with white beaches and turquoise waters? What a place to enter the world stage.

But what about the rest of our cast?