MotoGP, Superbike and the Suzuka 8 Hours: Somkiat Chantra, one man in three, makes Honda HRC history

Somkiat Chantra finished the first two free practice sessions of the Superbike World Championship at Cremona in nineteenth and fourteenth position. A bit better than usual, even keeping some very illustrious factory names behind him, but it’s certainly striking to consider that in a few days he’ll take his first flight to Japan to race in MotoGP at Motegi, entrusted as an HRC Honda standard-bearer. What’s more, he’s joining a very select group who have raced with the Honda Factory team in the three main world motorcycle championships (MotoGP, Superbike, Endurance).

'Kong' has even managed it all in the same year: full-time in Superbike, substitute in MotoGP, and a “benched” rider for the Suzuka 8 Hours (which he won, nonetheless). His illustrious predecessors, such as Jonathan Rea, Tadayuki Okada, or Takuma Aoki, did so at different stages of their respective careers, with mixed fortunes.

Chantra was dropped from MotoGP at the end of a difficult 2025 where he started fairly well but then struggled badly with compartment syndrome issues and, simply, the fact that he wasn’t ready for a sporting program bigger than him. Now he’s trying again, entering through the front door at HRC Honda, albeit as Joan Mir’s replacement. This reaffirms that Somkiat remains a highly valuable piece in Honda’s plans, also for commercial purposes. In Thailand, 32% of the population (and we’re talking about 71 million people) owns a motorized two-wheeler, mainly scooters/cubs, with Honda having done a roaring trade there for a long time. It’s a crucial market, never neglected on the sporting side either: after producing the first Thai rider to race in MotoGP (Chantra, indeed), now some aspiring Thai technicians and mechanics have begun gaining experience in Honda teams monitored by HRC in Japan. The aim is to bring motorcycles and motorcycling increasingly into the country’s “system” and everyday life.

Somkiat Chantra remains, in any case, the first Thai motorcyclist to have raced in MotoGP, to have won one (in fact, two) Grands Prix in the World Championship, and even the Suzuka 8 Hours. Without ever hopping on mid-race, and he’ll be in good company: at Motegi, on the MotoGP starting grid, he’ll share this curious precedent with Takaaki Nakagami (who won the 2010 Suzuka 8 Hours with HARC-PRO Honda in that way) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (a “benchwarmer” for Kawasaki KRT in the triumphant 2019 edition).

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