We Need A High-Budget Tuk-Tuk Racing Series Stat
MotoGP kicked off its 2026 season this past weekend, with its first Grand Prix round at Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Thailand. Thailand's also known for its tuk-tuks, so the folks at Dorna-I-mean-Liberty-Media-I-mean-MSEG decided to let each team get some of the preseason jitters out with something fun: A one-lap team-based tuk-tuk grand prix, complete with a driver swap halfway through the lap.
The result? Just an all-around fantastic time. The warm-up lap is the real star of the show here, with the Pramac Yamaha team absolutely refusing to keep all three wheels of their tuk-tuk on the ground if they can help it. Unsurprising from a team with showmen like Jack Miller and fresh-from-World-Superbike rider Toprak Razgatlioglu, but a joy to watch all the same. The single lap race, too, is a riot — even if it saw another late-last-lap one-position penalty like the much-maligned call against Marc Marquez in Saturday's sprint race.
The boys are having fun
MotoGP riders may be as competitive as any top-tier athletes, but they still seem to have a genuine sense of camaraderie out on the track. Every interior shot through this entire race shows ear-to-ear grins, and the guys are all laughing and making jokes together throughout the event. It's a fun contrast with the extremely official-looking MotoGP graphics package, where times are still live-tracked the way they would be in a two-wheeled race.
Given the stunning success of this race, I hereby move to make this a regular part of the MotoGP calendar — or, alternatively, for a similarly high-budget racing series to spring up centered entirely around tuk-tuks. Maybe just swap every Formula 1 chassis for one of these three-wheeled people haulers. It'd certainly make the races more interesting, and maybe we'd get to see Max Verstappen crack a smile that actually reaches his eyes.