stefan bradl · Biography

On 6 November 2011, at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia, Stefan Bradl sealed the Moto2 world championship at the final round of the calendar. It was the first intermediate-class world title for a German rider and the reward for a season he had controlled for months. Born on 29 November 1989 in Augsburg, Bavaria, Bradl went on to race five full seasons in MotoGP and, from 2019, was listed as a test rider for the Honda factory team, making many starts as a replacement and wildcard before retiring from racing in 2024.

Son of a world championship runner-up

Stefan is the son of Helmut Bradl, the German rider who won the 1991 Czech Grand Prix at Brno and finished runner-up in the 250cc world championship that year. He grew up around racing and reached the world championship young, making his debut at the 2005 Catalan Grand Prix as a 125cc wildcard on a KTM. His progress stalled in 2006, when he suffered a serious fracture in a practice crash at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Wins in the 125cc class

The breakthrough came in 2008 with Kiefer Racing on a factory Aprilia. That year he took his first Grand Prix win at Brno, the very track where his father had triumphed seventeen years earlier, and added a second victory at Motegi in the Japanese Grand Prix. He finished the championship fourth. In 2009, with the same outfit, he was tenth overall in what proved to be his final season in the smallest class.

The Moto2 title

Bradl moved up to Moto2 in 2010, still with Kiefer, and won his first race in the new category at Estoril in the Portuguese Grand Prix, ending the year ninth. The 2011 season brought the title. He led the standings for much of the year, but from the summer Marc Márquez strung together results and closed the gap. The fight was settled when the Spaniard crashed in practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix and the eyesight problems that followed kept him out for the rest of the season. Bradl was crowned 2011 Moto2 world champion with 274 points, four wins, eleven podiums and seven pole positions from 17 races.

Five years in MotoGP

In 2012 he stepped up to MotoGP with LCR Honda. His best result was fourth at Mugello and he finished eighth overall, earning the 2012 Rookie of the Year award. The 2013 season was his best in the premier class: seventh with 156 points. At Laguna Seca he claimed his only MotoGP pole and podium, finishing second ahead of Valentino Rossi. Later that year he broke an ankle at the Malaysian Grand Prix and missed two races. In 2014, his third and last campaign with LCR, he was ninth with 117 points.

The 2015 season was turbulent. He started with Forward Racing on a Yamaha but left the team during the summer break after the arrest of its owner, Giovanni Cuzari, and completed the year with Aprilia Racing Team Gresini. He stayed with Aprilia in 2016 and finished sixteenth with 63 points.

A season in World Superbike

In 2017 he switched championships to race in World Superbike with the Ten Kate-run Red Bull Honda team. It was an uneven year in which he contested six full rounds and four partial ones, finishing fourteenth with 67 points.

Honda test and replacement rider

Bradl returned to MotoGP in 2018 as a stand-in: he replaced Franco Morbidelli at the Sachsenring, raced as an HRC wildcard at Brno and Misano and took over from Cal Crutchlow at LCR for the last two rounds, finishing ninth in Valencia. From 2019 he was contracted to the Honda factory team as a test rider. That year he rode the injured Jorge Lorenzo's bike in Germany, Brno and Austria. In 2020, after Marc Márquez's serious injury at Jerez, he took his place at Repsol Honda from the Czech Grand Prix until the end of the season. He deputised for him again at Losail early in 2021 and in Argentina in 2022, and raced as a wildcard at Jerez in 2019 and 2021. In 2024 he contested six races with the HRC test team. In November 2024 he announced that the Barcelona Grand Prix was his last wildcard, closing his racing career with 131 MotoGP starts, one podium, one pole and 567 points.