And so, the season draws to a close, without champion Marc Marquez but also with a pair of new stars coming to the fore in the shape of Aprilia and Marco Bezzecchi.
Aprilia has been knocking on the door of sustained success since Aleix Espargaro scored the manufacturer’s first podium in 2021 and the first outright victory in 2022. Coming into 2025, it seemed as if the stars were aligning thanks to the signing of Jorge Martin, fresh from his championship year on a Pramac Ducati. We all know how that worked out, with Martin competing in only seven GPs thanks to persistent injury problems and not doing his stock any good through a messy contractual argument.
And don’t forget that, coming into 2025, Aprilia and Bezzecchi weren’t necessarily on the cards; Aprilia was trying hard to retain Maverick Viñales to ride alongside Martin, but Viñales chose to go to Tech3 KTM, leaving the door open for Bezzecchi, who might have been seen as a consolation prize for Aprilia, not a guaranteed star.
True, he won three GPs in 2023, but struggled to make the podium in 2024, scoring only one visit to that exalted piece of real estate. But his arrival at Aprilia was one of those happy coincidences of the right rider on the right bike at the right time in its development. Put simply, Bezzecchi is the reason why Aprilia has finished second in the manufacturer’s title race, and he himself is third in the rider’s title race; three GP victories, six further GP podiums, five Sprint race podiums and a single Sprint victory. This has been a very happy year for both team and rider.
Aprilia has another reason to be very happy, and that is the existence of a satellite team that is capable of winning races and therefore giving more-than-relevant technical feedback. Yes, Ducati has that in place as well, but the same can’t be said for KTM or Yamaha and, to an extent, Honda, although Zarco won for LCR in France. Frequently sporting the best livery, Trackhouse has shown that, if Aprilia continues to give it the equipment, the team can be expected to spring a surprise or two.
What has been interesting in the last four races of the season without champion Marc Marquez is the realisation that a championship season needs a leader. Yes, the title was decided already, so his absence had no effect on the outcome, and yes, it was good to approach each race weekend without any knowledge of who might be dominant and to potentially see new winners come to the fore, but it all felt a little directionless. Some of that can be attributed to the absence of the champion and some to the fact that there is not an obvious pretender to the throne.
Marquez’s teammate Bagnaia was nowhere; his brother had his moments in the sun, as did Bezzecchi and Acosta and Quartararo, but none of them, in all honesty, had a title-winning season. No, without Marc Marquez, the season ended on a slight whimper, not a bang.
That is, of course, all subjective. Personally, I was looking forward to watching Marquez, free of the pressures of delivering a title, continuing his dominance, and there is little to suggest that he wouldn’t have won the final four races as he pleased. Maybe he wouldn’t; maybe the rest of the front-runners, freed also from the shackles of trying to win the title, would have gone out to just have fun, and this might have thrown up some surprise results and hard fights at the front. It’s all conjecture, of course, but still fun for all that.
One rider who will be happy the season is finished will be Pecco Bagnaia. The series of events in the past four races couldn’t have been made up by even the most fanciful script writer, and then came Valencia, running out of fuel in qualifying? Who does that? Then, getting taken out by Zarco during the first lap of the GP. That’s five DNFs in a row for the Ducati rider. He, more than most, will be looking forward to concentrating on next season, starting on the Tuesday after the Valencia race, perhaps because the GP26 Ducati is widely acknowledged to be in reality a thinly-disguised GP24, with which Bagnaia did great things in 2024.
Pedro Acosta has enjoyed a strong finish to the end of the season, but he will be hoping that KTM can solve the RC16’s appetite for tyres, spoiling any chance KTM’s riders have of fighting to the finish. It’s the same for Yamaha, which will, of course, be putting all its eggs in the V4 basket from Tuesday’s test onwards. The engine has been raced at the end of the 2025 season, without any startling results, which does beg the question: Is Yamaha holding back in this area? The YZF-M1 chassis is widely acknowledged to be one of the best-handling on the grid, but that means nothing if they get swallowed up on the straights and cook their tyres trying to make up the difference in the corners. With every team using V4 engines, will Yamaha’s version be enough to pick the team up from the gutter? Certainly, Fabio Quartararo will be hoping so. As with Acosta, Quartararo has stated in no uncertain terms that he will jump ship if the manufacturer can’t give him a machine with which he can fight for wins and titles. We shouldn’t necessarily expect the Yamaha V4 to be topping time sheets just yet, but it would be good to see them making progress towards the front.
And so, the season is over, and we head into an extended period of testing, with two new faces to get used to: WSBK champion Toprak Razgatlioglu and newly-crowned Moto2 champion Diogo Moreira. The first race of the 2026 season is at the end of February and, as usual, the wait will be interminable, even with the distraction of Christmas to while away a couple of weeks.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read these MotoGP reports throughout the year. I hope we’ve brought some insight to the season and entertained you along the way. Rest assured that we’ll continue to cover the off-season, as and when anything of interest occurs, but like you, we’re setting the alarm for February, when the real action begins again.
