Value added subs | Pedrosa, Rea and other ace MotoGP wildcards

It says a lot when even winning a race can’t overshadow the performance of a wild-card in your own team, but Brad Binder – despite his Spanish MotoGP Sprint Race success – is still playing second fiddle to wild-card Dani Pedrosa within his own KTM Factory Racing team.

Not that he would necessarily begrudge the Spaniard’s moment in the Jerez sun, the former MotoGP ‘alien’ having made a grandstand return to action this weekend as a wild-card, the 37-year old qualifying and finishing sixth on his Sprint Race debut, more than four years after he hung his racing leathers up for good.

He’s not the only ‘value-added sub’ to have starred on occasion in MotoGP over the years though, as these examples show…

Dani Pedrosa

If your MotoGP Fantasy line-up could include one rider who doesn’t race in MotoGP full-time, you’d be a fool not to select Dani Pedrosa in that vacancy.

The Spaniard may have retired from racing at the end of the 2018 MotoGP season, but while most riders use the opportunity to pop their feet up, sleep-in and allow the waistline to expand, for Pedrosa, his ‘retirement’ was simply a change of job.

Disillusioned with the cut and thrust of MotoGP racing, not to mention the laborious media-related obligations it demanded, Pedrosa simply wanted to ride bikes fast without the fuss.

As such, his lead development role with KTM Factory Racing really is perfect for him, more so when you consider the 31-time MotoGP race winner has been labelled as the pivotal piece of the puzzle that has transformed the manufacturer into a contender.

Though Pedrosa has reportedly turned down multiple offers of a wild-card return since joining KTM in 2019, he has relented on a couple of occasions – once in 2021 when he scored a top ten finish in the Styrian MotoGP and again this weekend in the 2023 Spanish MotoGP.

Having already scored a sixth place finish in the Sprint Race from sixth on the grid, Pedrosa went on to finish seventh in the main GP. Not that it is the result that would have given him most satisfaction as KTM celebrated its first-ever double podium in MotoGP with Brad Binder in second and Jack Miller third…

Troy Bayliss

This is possibly the greatest one-off guest performance in history. Not just motorcycle racing, motorsport history. And not just history, we reckon this will stand the test of time in future as well.

A rider whose credentials on a Superbike are second to none, Bayliss’ return to MotoGP machinery at the 2006 Valencia MotoGP came hot on the heels of him clinching the second of his three WorldSBK titles for the Borgo Panigale marque.

Of course, Bayliss had been integral to Ducati’s MotoGP project from the beginning, forming one-half of its rider line-up during its inaugural 2003 campaign. However, after two seasons of solid results, Ducati went a different way and Bayliss jumped ship to Camel Honda for a time.

Returning to Ducati and the WorldSBK Championship for 2006,…