Colt Nichols is going back to where his championship was won. Team ROKiT Partzilla PRMX Yamaha announced on October 27 that the 2021 AMA 250SX East champion has signed with the team for the 2027 season, returning Nichols to Yamaha machinery and placing him aboard the YZ450F in the 450SX class with his familiar number 45.
The signing is the headline move of a transformative offseason for the PRMX organization, which is switching from Kawasaki to Yamaha for 2027 after more than a decade on green machines. Nichols, who has already been testing with the team at its facility in Florida, gives the program a proven winner at the front of its new 450 effort.
A Deal Months in the Making
The announcement, released by the team on Tuesday, October 27, confirmed that Nichols and team owner Julien Perrier had been working toward an agreement for some time.
"I've been talking to the team and working with Julien for several months and I'm happy we have been able to put a deal together that gets me back on a Yamaha where I've had a lot of success," Nichols said in the team's announcement. "I'm happy to be back on the Yamaha and this new YZ450 feels like home already."
Perrier, who has steadily built PRMX from a privateer operation into one of the paddock's most visible independent teams, was equally direct about what Nichols brings.
"We are excited to have a rider of Colt's caliber and we think he will fit right in with the team," Perrier said.
Nichols will run his signature number 45 — the number that long ago earned him the "Colt 45" nickname — and the team has confirmed he has already logged testing laps on the YZ450F in Florida as preparations for 2027 begin. The announcement covers the 2027 season; the team did not disclose contract length or a detailed race schedule beyond it.
Coming Home to Blue
The Yamaha connection is not a new experiment for Nichols. His defining career achievement came on a Yamaha, when he won the 2021 250SX East championship with Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing, capping a run that established him as one of the most technically polished riders of his generation.
Since then, his career has been a tour of the paddock. Nichols raced for Honda's factory effort during the 2023 Supercross season, moved to Rick Ware Racing for the 2023 Pro Motocross and SuperMotocross campaigns, spent the 2024 Supercross season with the factory Beta team, and then joined Twisted Tea Suzuki in August 2024. He remained with the Suzuki program through the end of the 2026 season, scoring six top-ten finishes in yellow and finishing 15th in the 2026 450SX standings and 16th in the SuperMotocross playoffs. As NBC Sports noted in its coverage of the move, PRMX will be his fifth team in five seasons.
That itinerary cuts both ways. Few riders available this offseason brought Nichols' combination of a regional championship, factory-team experience on four different brands, and recent 450 class results. The flip side is that he has rarely had the multi-year stability that the sport's elite programs are built on — something both sides will hope the Yamaha return can finally provide.
The Anchor of PRMX's New Era
Nichols does not arrive alone. Earlier in the offseason, PRMX welcomed Evan Ferry and Gavin Towers to the program — both riders moving over from Phoenix Racing Honda — as the team assembled its first Yamaha roster. Where Ferry and Towers represent the program's future, Nichols represents its present: an established 450 rider who has won at the sport's highest level and can benchmark a new motorcycle, a new manufacturer relationship, and a young roster all at once.
The pairing also reunites Nichols with the brand beneath his biggest success at precisely the moment PRMX is making the largest manufacturer change in its history. A team switching brands after a decade needs its lead rider to validate the new machine quickly, and Nichols' early verdict — that the YZ450F "feels like home already" — is exactly the signal the team wanted from its first test sessions.
Transworld Motocross has additionally reported Mitchell Harrison as part of the team's 450 plans for 2027, though PRMX's confirmed announcements to date are the Yamaha switch, Ferry, Towers and now Nichols. The team's 250 class assignments for Ferry and Towers have not been announced.
What Comes Next
Nichols and PRMX are expected to make their first start together when the 2027 Monster Energy AMA Supercross season opens at Anaheim 1 on January 9. For Nichols, the objective is straightforward: convert the stability of a deal agreed months before the season into the kind of consistent 450SX results that have flickered throughout his recent campaigns — six top tens on the Suzuki showed the speed has not gone anywhere.
For PRMX, the Nichols signing completes the outline of a genuinely new team: new manufacturer, new lead rider, and two young talents developing underneath him. Whether the Yamaha era opens with a statement result in Anaheim will be one of the quieter storylines worth watching when the gate drops.
See how the Nichols signing fits into the full picture in our 2027 Team Lineups hub and the complete 2027 Rider Moves tracker.
Sources: Team ROKiT Partzilla PRMX Yamaha announcement, via Supercross Live; team release republished by Racer X. Photo: Team ROKiT Partzilla PRMX Yamaha — Colt Nichols with his number 45 Yamaha YZ450F in the team's announcement photo.
