Moto3 coup: Who is Leonardo Zanni, Leopard Racing's 2027 newcomer?

Leonardo Zanni set to debut in the Moto3 World Championship with Leopard Racing: the official announcement came this Saturday at the Misano GP.

There will be at least one Italian rookie in Moto3 in 2027. Today it’s official: Leonardo Zanni will step up to the lightweight class of the World Championship with Leopard Racing. The Rome-born rider, long competing in JuniorGP/MotoJunior with Momoven Racing (the new name of Finetwork MIR Racing, with whom he has been linked for some time), who turned 18 on July 1st, will be one of the youngsters on the Moto3 World Championship grid—indeed, for now he’s the only confirmed Italian in this category. With one Italian moving up, Guido Pini promoted to Moto2, another arrives at Leopard Racing for the same challenge: Zanni has long raced on KTM machinery, so the switch to Honda will be an interesting change to follow.

Born in 2008 and originally from Rome, he fell in love with the sport as a child after seeing an electric minibike owned by a friend of his father. A fan of Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez, young Leonardo Alessandro Zanni (his full name) quickly made it to his first races. He started in 2018 in the Italian Minibike Championship; the following year he was 2nd in the Italian series, Junior A class, and in the European Championship. In 2018 he was 3rd at continental level, while in Italy he claimed his first title, winning the Italian Minibike Junior B Championship. He also had a brief stint in Spain’s Cuna de Campeones Moto5, while in 2020 he debuted in the then-PreMoto3 class of the CIV, securing the title in 2022.

He then moved to what was then the European Talent Cup within JuniorGP, which he joined the following year, and results started to become a bit harder to come by. In 2024 he also contested his only season in the Red Bull Rookies Cup, without noteworthy results. That same year he achieved his only ETC podium before moving up a category. In 2025 he recorded a win in Moto3, and this year, still in the same class, he boasts a pole position (Jerez) and a victory. Who knows—could the jump to the Moto3 World Championship turn into an interesting breakthrough for Zanni and for an Italian movement that’s been struggling?

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