By the early 2010s MotoGP faced a recurring challenge: the cost and technical sophistication required to field a competitive prototype made it difficult for independent teams without factory support to participate meaningfully. Grid numbers had declined from the high-water marks of earlier seasons, and the governing body sought a mechanism that would allow smaller, non-manufacturer teams to enter while keeping overall costs manageable.
For the 2012 season the championship introduced the Claiming Rule Team concept alongside the standard factory entries. The same year MotoGP increased engine displacement back to 1000 cc after the 800 cc limit that had been in place since 2007.
Under the CRT framework, teams not entered by one of the major manufacturers could apply for claiming rule team status. CRTs received more favourable technical allowances than factory teams: they were permitted to use more engines over the course of a season and were allocated larger fuel tanks, giving them an advantage in managing their machinery over a race distance.
In exchange, CRTs agreed to make their engines available to be "claimed" by factory teams after a race. Up to four engines per season could be acquired by a factory team at a fixed cost of 20,000 euros per unit including transmission, or 15,000 euros for the engine alone. This claiming mechanism was intended to prevent independent teams from running engines that exceeded a reasonable performance threshold relative to what they declared as a customer design.
The primary machines used by CRT entrants were typically adapted from Superbike World Championship specification engines, placed in prototype MotoGP chassis. Aprilia rejoined the MotoGP class in 2012 under the CRT designation. The claiming rule teams ran at the back of the field but provided additional championship entries during a period when the grid had thinned compared to earlier eras. The governing body received applications from sixteen new teams wishing to join under the CRT framework at its introduction.
From the 2014 season the claiming rule itself was removed and the independent category was rebranded the Open Class. The claiming mechanism had proven commercially awkward and was abandoned, but the concept of differentiated technical allowances for non-factory teams was retained and refined.
In the Open Class era all entries adopted a standard engine control unit. Factory teams were permitted to run their own proprietary software on this ECU, while Open Class entrants were required to use a standardised control software. Open Class teams continued to benefit from additional engine allocations and larger fuel allowances compared to factory entries, compensating partially for their lack of access to factory-grade electronics and development resources.
The Open Class format ran for the 2014 and 2015 seasons.
For the 2016 season the Open Class subclass was dropped entirely. Factory entries switched to the standard engine control unit software that had been mandatory for Open Class machines, equalising at least the electronic platform across the full grid. The differentiated entry categories that had defined the CRT and Open Class experiment were discontinued.
The era produced mixed results. Grid numbers increased during the CRT period and the championship saw new manufacturer names on the entry list, but the performance gap between factory machines and CRT entries was large enough that independent entries rarely featured in competitive battles at the front of the field. The experiment informed subsequent approaches to balancing the grid, including ongoing discussions about how to support satellite and independent teams within the factory-dominated structure of the modern MotoGP championship.