Sullivan Mounsey on His Road to MotoGP

The modern Road to MotoGP is ruthless in its clarity; it knows where talent is supposed to come from, how it should be shaped, and what it ought to resemble long before it reaches the global stage of grand prix racing. The result is a junior paddock of immense quality, but also one in which individuality can begin to feel secondary to the machinery of development.

Sullivan ‘Sully’ Mounsey is not so easily defined.

Entering his sophomore FIM MotoJunior World Championship campaign, formerly known as JuniorGP, and his final year in the Red Bull Rookies Cup, Mounsey steps into 2026 as a rider whose profile stretches beyond the usual shorthand of youth and potential. British, Jamaican and St Lucian, he already stands slightly apart within a system still dominated by the traditional geographies of Spain and Italy, yet what distinguishes him is not merely the background he carries, it is the scale of his ambition. Sully approaches racing not as a dream to be spoken about, but as a craft to be understood, dissected and mastered. In a paddock where so many careers are measured by how cleanly they can be streamlined, there is still something beautifully difficult to standardise about Sully.

The Early Years

That resistance to easy categorisation is present even in the way Mounsey speaks about his beginnings. His first memories of bikes were not shaped by a carefully plotted route into the MotoGP paddock, but by green laning on the front of his father’s dirt bike, fitted with his own handlebars grips and foot pegs as they rode along dirt roads. “It was just like the best time of my life ever,” he says. “I had all my little motocross kit and everything. I just looked like a little ripper on the front of my dad’s 450.”

By the increasingly accelerated standards of junior racing, Mounsey was not especially early to the sport. Before bikes properly took hold, there had been karting, football and swimming, each sitting somewhere between childhood interest and parental encouragement, and not all of them pursued with the same conviction. “I started riding bikes when I was nine, so I was quite a late starter,” he says. “I’d basically had the beginnings of a karting career with offers to head to Super1, plus longstanding junior league football with London Club, yet now I’m on motorbikes.”

Even then, tarmac was not the intention. Having grown too tall to keep sitting safely at the front of his father’s dirt bike, Mounsey wanted motocross, only for his father to take him instead to try road racing. “I was crying on my way up to this thing,” he says. “I don’t want to do motorbike riding, I want to do motocross riding.” The resistance did not last long. “I was like, you know, this is really fun. Can we go again next weekend?”

A Big Move

In a sport where development pathways can begin to feel predetermined almost before a rider has reached double digits, Mounsey came to tarmac comparatively late. He was nine when he first rode a bike properly, old enough for the gap to those already embedded in the minimoto world to be clear, but still young enough for the sport to take hold quickly once it did. What began as something he had resisted soon became the route he followed with increasing seriousness, through the British ranks and towards the Spanish system that now shapes so much of the Road to MotoGP. By 2025, it had taken him to Aspar, one of the most established junior structures in the sport.

For Mounsey, that meant stepping into JuniorGP, now renamed the FIM MotoJunior World Championship, with a team whose presence in the junior paddock carries a particular kind of authority. Aspar is not simply well known because of its branding or its proximity to the Grand Prix paddock, but because it has long been one of the clearest reference points for riders trying to move from national and regional competition into the world championship. To wear Aspar colours in JuniorGP is to be placed inside a system with history, expectation and a direct relationship to the top of grand prix motorcycle racing.

“It was very prestigious and it was a very top-class team of very lovely people,” he says of Aspar. “I did love the structure. I always had Nico and Jorge Martínez welcoming me to the garage. I’d have breakfast with them, I’d be speaking to them on GP weekends, and that was really lovely.”

The opportunity, however, was never only about the team name. To take it properly, Mounsey packed up his life in the UK and moved to Valencia, placing himself inside the country that now forms so much of the Road to MotoGP’s centre of gravity. Spain offered more than proximity to circuits; but the daily environment that a rider at his level increasingly needs, from regular bike training and access to big tracks to the simple reality of being surrounded by other riders already living at that standard.

“If it wasn’t for [Aspar], I probably would have never moved to Spain and my career wouldn’t be where it is now,” he says. “I think I’d have not got into Rookies for another year and I wouldn’t be where I am in my career, living my best life in Spain. I’d have probably kept living in England and just fitness training and not motorbike training.”

Spain also changed the terms of Mounsey’s preparation. In England, he says much of the work was still built around fitness rather than regular time on the bike; in Valencia, he had far greater access to circuits, trainers and the kind of daily riding environment that is difficult to replicate from the UK. At first, he admits, he was “training one time a day and living my best life,” before the people around him began to push for a more structured programme. Soon, the workload had stepped up significantly: big-track riding, small-track sessions, flat track and gym work began to shape his rapid progression and served as physical evidence of his commitment to improvement.

Manic Mounsey/Smooth Sully

That more structured approach also sharpened Mounsey’s understanding of his own riding, particularly the balance between aggression and control that has followed him through the junior ranks. Earlier in his career, he and his father had given one of his most obvious tendencies a name: “Manic Mounsey.” The phrase carried some humour, enough that it became a logo and a sticker, but it also identified a real problem. Mounsey had aggression, speed and a willingness to fight, but not always the control needed to turn that into consistent results. “I was just all over the place and it was costing me races,” he says. “Then I was like, right Sully, we’ve got to chill you out, we have to chill you out, you can’t be manic, you’ve got to be Smooth Sully.”

For a period, “Smooth Sully” became the correction, but by the end of 2025, particularly in the Red Bull Rookies Cup, Mounsey felt that the adjustment had begun to cost him in a different way. In trying to become cleaner and more controlled, he had also become easier to move backwards in races where track position is fought for constantly and rarely given back. Misano became the point at which he felt that needed to change. “I was like, no, I’m just going to keep fighting back, keep fighting back, keep fighting back,” he says. “It was a shame because if I’d done this in Mugello or in all these tracks I was at the front, I would have podiumed or been up to the front.” For 2026, the balance is clear enough: Mounsey does not need to lose the control of “Smooth Sully,” but nor can he afford to smooth away the aggression that made “Manic Mounsey” worth naming in the first place.

Finding the Edge

That balance between instinct and control is not limited to the way Mounsey races. It also shapes his interest in the technical side of the sport, where engineering has become another part of how he chases performance. Before moving to Spain, he completed a Level 2 engineering course, had begun a Level 3 diploma, and spent time around Formula One through work experience in aerodynamics and research and development. In a field already crowded with young riders who are fast, brave and ambitious, Mounsey’s point of difference is not only that he wants to be quicker, but that he wants to understand where that speed comes from.

“I love racing bikes, so I will do everything in my power to get the edge,” he says. “I can analyse my data and I can tell you exactly what the technician will see. I’m really, really good at that. What this means is that I’m able to do this during training. I’ve got my AIM dash and I analyse all my training data to help me improve like it’s a race weekend.”

For a rider still in the junior categories, that level of technical motivation is striking. Mounsey is not claiming to have mastered setup, but he wants to understand enough to make his feedback sharper and his preparation more exact. “It might not make a world of difference,” he says, “but every little helps, and that’s the difference between being 0.1 ahead and 0.1 behind.”

2026

In 2026, that preparation will be measured across two of the most important proving grounds available to a rider still trying to force his way into the Moto3 World Championship. With CIP Green Power Junior Team in the FIM MotoJunior World Championship, Mounsey remains on the Spanish-based ladder that has become central to the sport’s next generation, while his return to the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup places him back inside an equal-machinery championship run in direct view of the Grand Prix paddock. “At the end of the day, the simple point is Red Bull Rookies give kids the opportunity to get seen,” he says. “The fact is that on the world stage, you’re getting noticed and you’re not paid… you don’t get it on money, you have to be talented.”

For a rider who has already spent a season learning the demands of JuniorGP, now MotoJunior, and another trying to sharpen himself inside the Rookies Cup, 2026 cannot be treated as another year of quiet accumulation. It is a season built around exposure, but exposure only matters if it is matched by results. Mounsey is clear about what that requires.

“A successful 2026 season will look like a top three in both championships,” he says. “That is plain simple. I want to win. I just want to win and win and win and win.”

Across the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup and the FIM MotoJunior World Championship, Mounsey knows that 2026 cannot be treated as another year of experience if Moto3 is the next step he wants to make. “If I want to make it as a career, and I want to be in the Moto3 World Championship next year, I’ve got to be in top,” he says. “So no matter what I believe my level is now, I need to be in the top three in both championships. And I want to win that. I think that’s it. I want to win this year.”

Mounsey also brings a less familiar set of flags to a junior paddock still shaped, in both opportunity and visibility, by the traditional centres of Spain and Italy. He races as a British rider, but his background also carries Jamaica and St Lucia, two identities still rarely seen on the road to grand prix motorcycle racing. At a level built to feed the sport’s future world championship grids, that matters not because it makes him a symbol, but because it broadens the picture of who belongs there.

His helmets and leathers have become one way of carrying that heritage with him, rooted less in branding than in family, culture and a genuine affection for the places connected to him. “I think it’s really nice to put my culture and where I’m from out there,” he says. “I really love my family and I really love to show off where I’m from…I love the Caribbean,” he says. “It is the most beautiful place… I just love the culture. It’s the true honest answer.”

What Support Means

That is where the question of support becomes inseparable from the sporting reality. Mounsey is actively looking for sponsors to come on board for 2026, a season that will place him across two of the most important stages below Moto3 and demand the results to match. At this point in the pathway, backing is not separate from performance; it is part of whether a rider can keep pace with the opportunity in front of him.

Asked what people are getting behind when they get behind Sullivan Mounsey, he does not reduce the answer to pace alone. “When you get behind Sullivan Mounsey, what you get basically is an enthusiastic, loving, caring kid that will do anything in his power to make it,” he says. “And he will give 100%, because I always say 110%, but you can’t give 110%. So I always give 100% at everything. And I will always, always just try my best.”

That answer becomes more specific as he speaks about the standard he expects from himself, not only on the bike but in the way he approaches everything around it. “No matter what I do, I will always give 100%,” he says. “Whether it’s schoolwork, whether it’s track, whether it’s racing, or whether it’s helping somebody out, it’s always 100%, because I always live life with the belief that if I give 100% and I’m able to go to sleep feeling content with what I’ve done, I never ever want to go to bed and go, oh, I could have done something a little more today. Or I could push a little bit harder here.”

Mounsey is also trying to build something around his racing. Through Sully’s Superstar’s, a small project helping young riders coming through the ranks who once raced in England and now train and race in Spain, he has already begun using what he has learned to support others. “I want to basically help people get as much experience and be the best versions of themselves,” he says. “I believe that if I can help everybody be their best versions of themselves, that’s good. That’ll make me happy.”

That instinct to help others is also shaped by how clearly Mounsey understands the reality of the level he is now racing at. After moving from the British system into Rookies, he realised how significant the gap could be between national success and the riders already embedded in Spain, Moto4, PreMoto3 and ETC. It was not a question of whether he deserved to be there, but of accepting that the battle was now against the level itself. “In the end, the battle is with yourself, no one else,” he says. “So I help them celebrate that; it works in racing like it does in life really and with exams.”

For Mounsey, that perspective has become part of what he wants Sully’s Superstars to offer. It is not only about encouragement, but about helping younger riders understand where they are, what the next step requires, and why discomfort is often part of improvement. “To win at world level you need to reach a very high level of general proficiency,” he says. “Then after that it’s the desire, ambition and belief you can win that counts.”

2026 will be one of the most important years of Mounsey’s career, and he speaks as though he understands exactly what it demands. There is no shortage of young riders trying to be seen on the Road to MotoGP, but Mounsey gives people more to get behind than promise alone: a serious campaign, a technical mind, a clear target and the kind of ambition that has already reshaped the way he trains, races and thinks about the sport.