The talent-nurturing team harbouring Britain's next MotoGP star

Britain faces a dearth of MotoGP-potential as 2020 reaches its halfway stage. But that's not exactly a new thing. The reality is, ever since production-based racing established itself as a more affordable means to lucrative career opportunity for British riders in the 1980s, the number of truly quality riders from this troubled island nation making it into the premier class has fallen away dramatically.

Given the UK used to absolutely own the grand prix paddock back in the 1950s, '60s and '70s thanks to the likes of Geoff Duke, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood and Barry Sheene - to name but a very few - it's a tough reality to get to grips with.

Between 1981 and 2016, not once did the union flag fly above a winning rider in the premier class. Cal Crutchlow ended a 35-year wait when he guided his LCR Honda to a stunning wet-weather victory at the 2016 Czech Grand Prix and in that time only once did a British rider win the world title in any class.

Danny Kent won the Moto3 title in 2015, but his career since that momentous day has fallen to pieces. A disastrous 2018 Moto2 season resulted in his being fired by Speed Up for poor performances and last year he received a suspended jail sentence for carrying a knife, which resulted in him losing his British Superbike ride.

MotoGP promoters Dorna Sports has made a solid effort over the last couple of decades to rectify the lack of Britsh talents in MotoGP, bringing up the likes of Scott Redding - who almost won the 2013 Moto2 title - and Bradley Smith. But the former is now racing in World Superbikes, via a title-winning campaign in British Superbikes last year 2019 after his miserable final MotoGP campaign with Aprilia the year before, while Smith has lucked his way into a second chance with Aprilia this year thanks to Andrea Iannone's doping scandal, following his dismissal from KTM at the end of 2018.

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And there has been the British Talent Cup - Dorna's talent-rearing series modelled on its hugely successful Asia Talent Cup, which aims to get young (and crucially, underfunded) British riders onto the first step of the grand prix ladder. But, only into its third year, it's not yet churning out that talent.

However, Dorna announced last week that the series had secured a major backer in Honda UK, and has guaranteed to place a rider into the CEV Moto3 Junior World Championship (MotoGP's nursery for rearing its future stars) in 2021. Throw in the addition of additional prize money and the long-term future is at least shaping up better.

A couple of years ago, as a fresh-faced Autosport junior, I wrote a feature on Britain's then-uncertain future and noted that the arrival of Jake Dixon into Moto2 with the Aspar team on a KTM chassis could be just the turnaround the UK needed.

Dixon cut his teeth in the British Superbike paddock's lower classes before getting a shot at the main Superbike class in 2016. A stuck throttle on his Lee Hardy Racing-run BMW led to a nasty shunt at Oulton Park and left him with a broken hip.

But he bounced back in 2017, winning his first races at Knockhill, before mounting a serious title charge the following season to eventually finish runner-up to Leon Haslam.

A one-off Moto2 shot at Intact GP at Silverstone on the Suter chassis in place of an injured Marcel Schrotter yielded a respectable 25th-place finish - just 44 seconds from the win. That may not sound all that impressive, but considering the difference in switching from a BSB-spec Kawasaki to a Moto2 bike is like suddenly changing the hand you write with, Dixon didn't disgrace himself.

"They're so different, because you ride the BSB bike - it's a road bike, effectively - and you've got Pirelli tyres that are effectively a lot softer than a Dunlop," Dixon explained to Autosport recently. "So the bike, as a package on the Pirelli and the road bike is a real different feeling.

"If you were in a go-kart and you went down the road, you're going to feel a speed bump ten times more [than in a normal car], and that's effectively what it's like from Superbike to Moto2 bike."

The biggest factor in the return of the confidence which made him an impressive frontrunning talent in BSB is his surroundings: in his mind, it's the "best" team in Moto2

On paper, jumping onto the KTM chassis last year was a good move. The Austrian marque's debut in Moto2 the year before yielded three victories in the last three races and Miguel Oliveira challenged for the title on the bike in 2018. But KTM took its eye off the ball as it ploughed more resources into its MotoGP project, and the end result was a bike all of its riders struggled on for half the season.

As a result, Dixon only managed two points finishes all year - a 12th at Assen (a track he knew from his BSB days) and 13th at Valencia, which did at least hint at potential the bike was masking.

Dixon continues: "Obviously, it wasn't an ideal situation to be on that bike, but saying that, Brad Binder did a really good job on it [missing the title by three points after five wins in the last nine races].

"So I needed to - throughout the season - adapt to the way that the bike needed to be ridden. Also I didn't know most of the tracks, so I was not only having to learn the bike, I had to learn the tracks as well.

"It was a super difficult season, but in certain conditions I was able to show what I could do and I feel like that's only a glimpse of what's to come in the future, especially in the dry."

Despite the misery of his debut Moto2 campaign, Dixon found himself rather fortunately snapped up by one of the grid's top teams in the Sepang Racing-run Petronas Sprinta outfit. After a solid pre-season, Dixon ended the Qatar season-opener 14th aboard his Kalex chassis - 12.7s from the win.

Admitting the strength of the package underneath him means he'll not "really need to change too much" on the bike when racing resumes at Jerez on 19 July, Dixon cuts a far more confident figure in 2020 with grounded goals of pushing towards consistent top 10 finishes in his sophomore effort.

The biggest factor in the return of the confidence which made him an impressive frontrunning talent in BSB is his surroundings: in his mind, it's the "best" team in Moto2. But more importantly, SRT has proven to be the best place for young riders brimming with talent in need of a team to coax it out of them after a tough run.

In his sensational rookie campaign in MotoGP last year with the fledgling SRT, Fabio Quartararo scored seven podiums and six poles, challenged Marc Marquez on occasion and earned himself a graduation to the factory Yamaha team for 2021. Yes, the M1 is a rookie-friendly bike, but the team run by ex-Sepang CEO Razlan Razali, Johan Stigefelt and Wilco Zeelenberg moulded Quartararo from the broken kid prodigy he was when he was signed by the team midway through 2018 to the Marquez-troubler he's become.

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"The way I look at it, and the way I approach it is: it is what it is, and I feel like everything in life is happening for a reason, and if my time is meant to be in MotoGP it's going to be," Jake Dixon

"I couldn't be in a better team than what I've got now," Dixon said of SRT. "Razlan's such a super nice guy, and obviously 'Stiggy' is such a great guy as well.

"The combination of them both working together is a really good one, because Razlan is really hard on you, and then Stiggy is almost the softer one that you get almost a little bit more out of, whereas Razlan doesn't give too much away.

"But I like that, and I like the pressure that he puts you under, because it makes you perform, and it shows how much he wants it as well. It's such a great combination between the two of them, and I'm in the best Moto2 team in the paddock."

The uncertainty Alex Marquez's move to LCR Honda in 2021 has placed Crutchlow's career in and Aprilia's unknown plans beyond this year - should Iannone have his 18-month ban overturned - means 2021 could see a MotoGP grid devoid of a British star, although Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta recently told Autosport that it would "help" find Crutchlow a place on the 2021 grid.

With ex-Aprilia man Sam Lowes unlikely to find his way back into MotoGP from his Marc VDS Moto2 ride this year, Dixon has suddenly become an important figure.

But, should Dixon make the progress he believes he can this year by rubberstamping regular top 10s and the odd top five onto his scorecard this season, SRT may well be inclined to promote him into its MotoGP ranks for 2022 should Valentino Rossi decide 2021 is to be his farewell tour.

If you think that sounds a little bit of a stretch, remember: Quartararo's links to SRT in 2018 came rather out of the blue. And should 2021 not feature a Brit on the MotoGP grid, Dorna will be keen to rectify this for 2022.

For now, however, Dixon has protected his shoulder from the pressures of this situation and is confident that his time will come if he has earned it.

"The way I look at it, and the way I approach it is: it is what it is," Dixon concludes.

"I feel like everything in life is happening for a reason, and if my time is meant to be in MotoGP it's going to be. I'm not going to do too much stressing in trying to be in the top class and, like I say, if my results are good I'm going to be there."

MotoGP returns to action on 19th July at the Circuito de Jerez - live on BT Sport