From the WorldSBK paddock to Moto3: SSP300 world champion Beñat Fernández is LevelUp MTA’s new star

From Supersport 300 World Champion to the Moto3 World Championship, but there’s more: the unique career of Beñat Fernández, the new signing for Alessandro Tonucci’s LevelUp MTA.

The first market move for the Moto3 World Championship comes with a curious backstory. Beñat Fernández, an 18-year-old Basque rider, is the new name chosen by LevelUp MTA for the 2027 season. He’s a world champion, but from the WorldSBK paddock: he’s the most recent Supersport 300 title holder, a category that disappeared at the end of last year to make way for this year’s Sportbike class, in which he’s currently racing. A different world! At the same time, however, he’s also leading the Red Bull Rookies Cup, where he debuted in 2025. A fan of Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez, let’s not forget that Efren Vazquez, a former Moto3 World Championship rider, has had a hand in his sporting journey… Let’s take a closer look at the career of this young rider who describes himself as “introverted but friendly.”

Beñat Fernández Etxeberria, “Pelontxu,” born on November 19, 2007 in the Basque Country, began his motorcycle journey at the age of 4, when his motor-enthusiast father gave him a small bike. A hobby that quickly became a passion, it didn’t take long before he was competing in regional (where he won several titles) and national minibike championships. Motorcycling brought the whole family together, even more so after Beñat’s mother passed away 5 years ago: his father and older sister have always been his biggest supporters. Back to racing, it’s worth noting that the young Basque has also won in motocross and supermoto: in 2021, for example, he was Moto4 ESBK vice-champion and 3rd in the Campeonato de España de Supermotard, and from 2022 onward we’d find him solely in road racing. That’s the year he debuted in the European Talent Cup, where he stayed until 2024.

He stepped up to Moto3 in JuniorGP; in that same season he was also accepted into the Red Bull Rookies Cup, but we also saw him in Italian Moto3: he raced at Mugello in June with GP Project and 2WheelsPoliTo, taking a 2nd place and a win. But 2025 was above all the year of glory in the Supersport 300 World Championship: three wins, seven other podiums, and points in every race secured the world crown. This year, in addition to contesting the Barcelona weekend in Moto3 of MotoJunior, he’s splitting his efforts between the Sportbike World Championship and the Rookies Cup, which he leads. In the World Championship, however, he missed the Portimao round due to homologation issues with his KOVE and did not take part in the Aragon round because it clashed with the KTM one-make series. In the races he did contest, he scored three points finishes, a double DNF at Misano, and one result outside the points.

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