Wayne Rainey wants to give young American motorcycle racers the same opportunity as Europeans to compete at higher levels. I spoke with the three-time MotoGP World Champion about his work with MotoAmerica’s Talent Cup. The Talent Cup series helps develop young U.S. racers who want to progress to the elite MotoGP motorcycle racing series.
European racers dominate the highest levels of professional motorcycle racing due to widespread organized support for younger racers in countries such as Italy and Spain. Racers in the U.S. who aspire to compete at upper levels of the sport have to find their own way to connect with different teams.
Wayne Rainey: world champion and American road racing leader
Rainey, who was the MotoGP World Champion in 1990, 1991, and 1992, worked through the ascending levels of motorcycle racing on his own. In addition to his three MotoGP titles, Rainey is also a two-time American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Superbike Champion.
An inductee in both the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, Rainey was also honored by the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) as a Grand Prix Legend.
Rainey’s motorcycle racing career as a racer ended in 1993 following a crash during the Italian Grand Prix that paralyzed his lower body for life. Rainey’s motorsports involvement did not end after the crash, however, as he turned to team management.
In 2015, Rainey and two partners formed MotoAmerica to manage the AMA road racing series. Rainey founded the Talent Cup in 2025, a MotoAmerica series specifically for young racers aged 14 to 21.
Historical context of the Talent Cup
Rainey explained why American racers’ success in MotoGP racing led to European development: “MotoGP is the premier motorcycle racing series in the world. It’s the F1 [of] motorcycles. In the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, Americans dominated the series. So much so that the Europeans really went to work on ‘How can we stop the Americans?'”
Countries like Italy and Spain made huge investments in the young talent,” he continued. “They created racetracks for them to race on, and the government helped fund these young talents coming up. The series is owned by Dorna, which is a Spanish company, so there was a lot of emphasis from the Spanish to get the young Spanish to come up.”
They were always there in the smaller classes, but when you got to the very top classes, where the bikes were the most difficult to ride, they didn’t have a presence.”
Rainey added, “So they have done a tremendous job since the early 2000s, Italy as well. On the U.S. side, we spoiled the American public, and the world public, with the success of the American riders because we basically had a background of flat track racing, where you learn to ride the bike with the throttle. The Americans had fewer opportunities as the Europeans started getting up to speed. And here we are in 2025, I think there’s only one American on the grid in MotoGP. There has been a big reset for our share in MotoGP.”
So what are we going to do about this?” he asked. “How are we going to get Americans back competitive and back on the world stage? This is why we created the Talent Cup.”
Motorcycle racing in the U.S. in the 2000s
“Back when we were racing in the States, the U.S. AMA Superbike championship was focused on raising the young racers. We had a lot of manufacturers. There were a lot of high-paying competitive racing seats for Americans and all other nationalities to come to the U.S. Superbike championship,” Rainey explained.
That all changed in the early 2000s. “The rules changed in the AMA Superbike championship. No longer was Superbike the premier class; they went to a Supersport class. A few of the manufacturers left. Honda, Kawasaki, and Ducati all left the AMA superbike championship, which really put a big hole for young talent coming up,” he explained.
“At that stage, I started noticing, watching the World Championship, there was starting to be less talent coming up from the U.S. side. So, I started to put a program together, with my MotoAmerica partners, in 2013-2014, a Talent Cup class, much like we have now for young Americans starting at 14 and 15. We started to design a bike and actually built one bike.”
“But,” Rainey noted, “the AMA series was struggling pretty badly by then, and we had an opportunity to acquire the sanction for the Superbike series, so in 2015, we started MotoAmerica. We revitalized the U.S. Road Racing Championship and had to put the Talent Cup on hold. So, here we are 11 years later, we revised it, and that’s where we’re at.”
MotoGP, MotoAmerica, and the Talent Cup
I asked Rainey about the relationship between MotoAmerica and MotoGP.
“We have a very close relationship with Dorna, who run MotoGP. When they took over the World Championship in 1992, I was the first Championship rider for them. They have always asked me to get a little more involved,” he said.
“There’s always been a big push to get more Americans involved with MotoGP, especially now that Liberty Media, which currently owns F1, is acquiring MotoGP, a deal that will probably finish in July,” he explained. “From that standpoint, there’s a real interest in growing the sport in the U.S. And to do that, you need more American riders.”
Rainey added, “To have an international Championship, you have to have riders from all over the world, not just Spain and Italy. And right now, MotoGP is flooded with Spanish and Italians. They have a lot of academies that get these young riders at four or five years old, and they start drilling them right away on how to be a road racing prospect.”
This is something we didn’t focus on because our system worked very well in the past, but it kinda waned in the last few years. This is why we’ve started the Talent Cup,” he said.
What the Talent Cup racers ride
Rainey and his partners have designed a new bike that all Talent Cup racers ride.
“So, the bike we created for the Talent Cup is designed in Germany,” he said. “It’s called a Kramer and the chassis is a replica of what they race in the World Championships. In the past, the bikes were production-based bikes, so every time you created a lot of corner speed, the chassis flexed a little bit too much. So you couldn’t put much pressure on the tires.”
This new bike is actually 100 pounds lighter than the junior cup bikes that we’ve had over the last seven or eight years. It’s much stiffer, it’s got more horsepower, and we’ve been breaking all the lap records. We’ve only had two races, but we’ve broken the lap records by quite a bit for the first two races,” Rainey explained.
“Another thing is that all the manufacturers like Ducati, Yamaha, and Honda are looking for the next American,” he said. “Ducati is the current World Champion, and they are actually sponsoring a team here in the States in the Talent Cup. It’s the same with Yamaha and Honda, sponsoring a team with their name on a Kramer bike.”
An opportunity with Red Bull for top Talent Cup riders
In addition to creating the Talent Cup series for young U.S. racers, Rainey worked with Dorna and MotoGP to set up an additional opportunity for American riders.
At the conclusion of the season, up to five exceptional riders from the MotoAmerica Talent Cup will be invited to join the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup—a prestigious European racing series that has been instrumental in launching the careers of future MotoGP stars.
MotoAmerica Talent Cup Schedule
The remainder of the 2025 Talent Cup races:
| May 30 – June 1 | Road America | Elkhart Lake, WI |
| July 25-27 | Vintage Motorcycle Days, Mid-Ohio | Lexington, OH |
| August 1-3 | Virginia International Raceway | Danville, VA |
| September 12-14 | Circuit of the Americas | Austin, TX |
| September 26-28 | New Jersey Motorsports Park | Milleville, NJ |
All 2025 MotoAmerica races are streamed on MotoAmerica Live+.
