Grand Prix motorcycle racing is the top class of motorcycle road racing events that take place on road circuits sanctioned by the FIM. Since 2002, the top division is called MotoGP.
MotoGP is the premier prestigious road-ring motorcycle racing competition. The competition, where the world’s fastest motorcyclists compete for victory has been held annually since the beginning of 1949. MotoGP races are held at tracks around the world, including Europe, Asia, America, and Australia.
The championship is currently divided into three classes: MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3. All three classes use special prototype motorcycles, which are not freely available and are not authorized for use on public roads.
The MotoGP structure is pretty clear: 21 races, 11 teams, and 22 riders, that is, each team has 2 riders. Competitors include riders from Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Japan, France and other countries. By the way, back in 2022, the series had 12 participants, but in 2023 Suzuki refused to participate.
The teams are divided into factory and independent. Factory teams produce their own cars, and independent teams rent motorcycles from manufacturers but manage and finance themselves.
The championship was initially called FIM World Championship. This logo of theirs said just that in grey letters. ‘FIM’ was written in bigger, tilted characters above the rest of the wordmark. Moreover, the central letters was positioned to look like a wheel of a motorcycle if looked at from the front. The rest of the motorcycle (with a driver) was drawn in some detail around it.
If you take a look at the original version, you will see the combination of black rhombuses of various sizes with the wordmark. The wordmark has two parts: the lettering “moto” is red, while the “gp” is black. The color is used to break down the name of the brand into meaningful parts, and thus help the reader “decipher” the word.
The italicized letters and the diagonal theme in the rhombuses make the design look dynamic.
The emblem has become streamlined and more dynamic. This is partly because some of the angles of the rhombuses have been rounded and partly due to the sleeker typeface.
The word “MotoGP” is now all red. However, there is still a border between the two meaningful parts of the brand’s name due to the different letter case (“moto” is lowercase, while “GP” is uppercase).
In 2020 the visual identity of MotoGP was significantly changed, reflecting the brand’s course of modernization. The motorcycle race’s logo was redrawn in a minimalistic black-and-white color palette, with just one element, the wordmark. The name of the race was written in a sleek and stable sans-serif typeface, with a smooth wavy cut-out on top of the “P”s vertical bar.
The redesign of 2024 has added more complicated elements to the MotoGP logo. Now the lettering is set in two styles: the solid black “Moto” in the lowercase, with an interesting wide “M” featuring rounded peaks, and the massive uppercase “GP” set in white with black contouring, with the characters glued to each other.
The current MotoGP logo features a dynamic type. The implied motion comes partly from the rounded angles and partly from the fact that the letters are italicized.
The combination of black and a slightly cooled-down shade of red has been used as the main color scheme since 2000. It is eye-catching enough without being too noisy.