When Kawasaki withdrew from MotoGP before the 2009 season due to the global financial crisis, a scaled-down successor called Hayate Racing Team was formed to run the remaining ZX-RR hardware. The name derived from the Japanese word for hurricane. Marco Melandri rode the single-bike entry; despite Kawasaki halting development from March 2009 onwards, Melandri produced a remarkable second-place finish at the French Grand Prix at Le Mans.
For 2010 the organisation entered the newly created Moto2 class as Forward Racing, running Suter chassis for Jules Cluzel and Claudio Corti. Cluzel won the British Grand Prix and finished seventh in the championship. Corti took pole position at the same race but could manage no better than ninth across the season. The team competed in Moto2 continuously through this period while also maintaining a parallel MotoGP CRT presence from 2012 onwards.
Forward Racing returned to MotoGP as a Claiming Rule Team in 2012, signing Colin Edwards on a Suter-BMW. A separate Moto2 team that year fielded Alex de Angelis and Yuki Takahashi; after switching from Suter to FTR frames mid-season, de Angelis won the Malaysian Grand Prix. In 2013 the MotoGP entry expanded to two bikes — Edwards alongside Claudio Corti on FTR-Kawasaki machinery — while four riders competed in Moto2 on Speed Up bikes.
For 2014 Forward Racing secured Yamaha YZR-M1 engines and ran Colin Edwards and Aleix Espargaró. Espargaró proved highly competitive: he took pole position at Assen and finished second at Aragon, ending the season seventh in the championship. The team experimented with a bespoke chassis built by Harris Performance for Edwards, debuted at Mugello. The Yamaha partnership continued into 2015 with Stefan Bradl and Loris Baz; Bradl was released mid-season at his own request and replaced by Claudio Corti. Forward left MotoGP after 2015.
Forward committed fully to Moto2 from 2016, running Kalex frames for Lorenzo Baldassarri and Simone Corsi. Baldassarri scored the team's third-ever World Championship victory at the 2016 San Marino Grand Prix. The outfit retained the same rider pairing in 2017.
From 2019 Forward began a significant technical partnership with MV Agusta, campaigning the Italian manufacturer's F2 chassis with Dominique Aegerter and Stefano Manzi. The 2020 season on the MV Agusta produced a third-place finish in the Moto2 teams' championship, with Manzi taking the team's first pole position at Valencia. Baldassarri returned in 2021 alongside Corsi, who then retired from racing in 2022 after more than three hundred Grand Prix starts.
The MV Agusta collaboration ended in January 2023, though the team retained the chassis — rebranded as a Forward rather than MV Agusta machine — for Marcos Ramírez and Álex Escrig. Results were limited to four points in 2023, including a single point scored by replacement rider Sean Dylan Kelly at the Indian Grand Prix.
In 2024 Forward expanded into MotoE and the inaugural WorldWCR (World Women's Circuit Racing) season with Andrea Mantovani and María Herrera. Herrera finished second overall in the WorldWCR championship. For 2025 the team doubled its WorldWCR entry, signing Roberta Ponziani as a second rider alongside Herrera.
In Moto2 for 2024, Escrig continued alongside Xavier Artigas, who was making his class debut. The team also moved away from the MV Agusta-derived machine and constructed its own chassis, marking its return to in-house chassis manufacturing. The 2024 Moto2 season also saw Forward return to using a Kalex-underpinned platform branded as Forward.
Forward Racing has competed at the top level of Grand Prix motorcycle racing across four categories over more than fifteen years. The team played a transitional role in preserving Kawasaki's MotoGP presence through the Hayate arrangement, later bridged the Claiming Rule Team experiment, and has sustained itself as a genuinely independent chassis builder at various points. Its 2019–2023 partnership with MV Agusta was particularly significant as the Italian brand's primary route back into Grand Prix competition after a lengthy absence. The team's continued involvement in women's motorsport through WorldWCR marks another evolution in a characteristically adaptive history.