Thomas Luthi · Biography

On 6 November 2005, in the final race of the 125cc World Championship in Valencia, Thomas Lüthi crossed the line in ninth place. Mika Kallio won that race, but the Swiss rider had arrived with a 23-point lead and ended the season five points clear of the Finn. That result made him 125cc world champion in 2005. Born on 6 September 1986 in Oberdiessbach, in the canton of Bern, and raised in the Emmental, Lüthi raced twenty seasons in the World Championship between 2002 and 2021. He competed in 125cc, 250cc, Moto2 and MotoGP and collected 17 Grand Prix wins and 65 podiums.

From pocket bikes to the World Championship

He started racing pocket bikes at the age of nine and won pocket bike championships in 1999 and 2000. In 2002 he moved up to 125cc, finishing second in the European Championship and third in the German series. That same year he made his World Championship debut at the German Grand Prix, finishing 26th on an Elit Grand Prix Honda RS125R, and ended the season with 7 points. His first podium came in 2003, a second place at the Catalan Grand Prix, and he finished that year 15th with 68 points. 2004 was a step backwards: four retirements in a row and four races missed through injury left him on 14 points.

The 2005 title

With the same team and the same Honda, 2005 changed his career. At Le Mans he took his first Grand Prix win, at the French Grand Prix, and went on to win at Brno, Sepang and Phillip Island as well. He finished the year with four wins, eight podiums and 242 points, and held off Kallio at the Valencia finale. He was named Swiss Sportsman of the Year for 2005. In 2006, racing as champion, he won again at Le Mans, although he finished eighth in the standings with 113 points.

Three seasons in 250cc

In 2007 he stepped up to 250cc with the Emmi-Caffè Latte team on an Aprilia RSA 250. He was eighth in his first year with 133 points, eleventh in 2008, a season in which he scored two podiums, and seventh in 2009 with 120 points. He did not win a race in the class, which was discontinued at the end of that season to make way for Moto2.

Moto2 with Interwetten

In 2010 he made his Moto2 debut on a Moriwaki for the Interwetten team. He finished fourth with five podiums despite a collarbone injury around the Silverstone and Assen rounds, where he still finished second and third. From 2011 he raced a Suter chassis, winning in Malaysia that year and in France in 2012, a season he ended fourth with 191 points. After sixth place in 2013, he won in Japan and Valencia in 2014 and was fourth again with 194 points. In 2015 he switched to Kalex and won at Le Mans once more.

Back-to-back runner-up finishes

The 2016 and 2017 seasons were the strongest of his career in the intermediate class. In 2016 he won in Qatar, Britain, Japan and Australia and finished Moto2 runner-up with 234 points, behind Johann Zarco. In 2017 he scored ten podiums and wins at Brno and Misano, and went into the closing rounds fighting Franco Morbidelli for the title. A crash in qualifying at the Malaysian Grand Prix kept him out of the race and handed the championship to the Italian. Lüthi was second again, with 243 points.

One year in MotoGP

On 24 August 2017 his move to EG 0,0 Marc VDS for 2018 was announced, on a Honda RC213V with Morbidelli as his team-mate. It was his only season in the premier class. He scored no points and finished 29th, with a best result of 16th place, which he recorded at Losail, Le Mans, Brno, Phillip Island and Sepang.

Return to Moto2 and retirement

In 2019 he returned to Moto2 with Dynavolt Intact GP. He won the Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin, took eight podiums and finished third in the championship with 250 points, his highest tally in the class. After 11th place in 2020 with the same team, he raced 2021 for the Pertamina Mandalika SAG Team and on 19 August that year announced that he would retire at the end of the season. He closed his Moto2 career with 12 wins, 53 podiums and 7 pole positions. In 2022 he became sporting director of the Prüstel GP Moto3 team, and in February 2025 he was announced as riding coach for the German Moto2 team Intact GP.