A return to racing in what is to be the final season of the 1000cc era and it didn’t disappoint; fantastic action, incidents, penalties, crashes, equipment failures, a close-fought Sprint race alongside a runaway Main race victory, huge disappointments alongside first-time euphoria, one manufacturer living up to pre-season predictions, others throwing a surprise into the ring and still more flailing around at the back of the field.
At the final pre-season test, Aprilia was looking extremely confident and Marco Bezzecchi and the manufacturer duly translated this into pole position in Thailand, after showing the way throughout practice. If Bezzecchi blinked while leading the Sprint race, then he was majestic in the Main race, taking his and Aprilia’s first hat-trick of consecutive victories, Thailand adding to the victories in the final two races of 2025 (four out of five, if you count Philip Island). Not only that, but there were four Aprilias in the top five in the Main race and no Ducati on the podium for the first time in 88 races.
Not only no Ducatis, but a disaster for Marquez as he suffered a severely bent rear wheel rim and a subsequent deflated tyre as he was caught out by running wide over a kerb. This was after a Sprint race incident between him and Acosta that the stewards judged to be too aggressive, and resulted in him giving the place back, allowing Acosta into the lead with no time for Marquez to regroup and renew the challenge. Second place in the Sprint was in no way as bad as it could have been, and wasn’t it a brilliant race? The perfect way to kick off the season.
The KTMs looked very good, especially in the hands of Acosta, and he left Thailand with the championship lead, a first for the Austrian manufacturer. Whether this can be maintained will only be revealed in the races to come, some of which will suit the KTM while others will not, while the Ducati seems to enjoy an advantage at every track. Or, at least, they did last year. This year? Who knows?
As Aprilia has demonstrated over the last three races and especially in Thailand, the RS-GP is very close to, if not level with, the Ducati GP25/6 and, in Bezzecchi and Martin, not to mention Trackhouse Aprilia’s Fernandez and Ogura, all of whom had a brilliant weekend, there is an awful lot of talent. Getting all four bikes into the top five at the finish of the Main race was incredible; if Aprilia can maintain this performance, the season is going to be very interesting indeed. Throw KTM into the mix, and it could be the most open season for a long time.
If Marquez was fighting at the front, Bagnaia could only manage a brace of ninth places. In pre-season testing, he was looking much happier than throughout the 2025 campaign, but in Thailand, he missed out on a Q2 qualifying spot and struggled with rear tyre wear in the latter half of the race, complaining of wheel spin in fifth gear on the straights! How quickly has optimism been dashed from his demeanour.
There were some properly destroyed Michelin rear tyres after the race – Joan Mir had to retire his Honda towards the end of the race because the rear tyre had all but disintegrated, which led to cretinous armchair commentators demanding that Pirelli take over immediately, not in 2027.
What a ridiculous idea. Marquez’s tyre deflation had nothing to do with the tyre, and if the rear tyres of all riders looked bad at the end of the race, then that’s simply something they have to deal with as the professional racers they are. As it was, Michelin brought a special-carcass tyre to Thailand to cope specifically with the heat experienced there. It was this stiffer carcass that helped Aprilia and hindered Ducati, because the Ducati excels on corner entry and exit, where the GP26 needs the tyre to squish into the tarmac. In contrast, the Aprilia excels in corner speed, and there, the stiffness of the carcass is not an issue.
Any tyre supplier is damned no matter what they do; make the tyres hard enough to cope with every condition, from extreme heat, to abrasive track surfaces, to transmitting 300 horsepower over a full race distance, and the tyre will be all but unrideable. Make them too soft, and they won’t last a half race distance. It’s a balancing act that very few component suppliers have to face, and inevitably, sometimes the tyre supplier is going to get it wrong.
There is no doubt that it will take Pirelli some time to get up to speed in racing conditions; testing is one thing, but the thick of an in-race battle is quite another. Pirelli is also going to get it wrong on occasion and, inevitably, those same armchair idiots are going to start shouting that Pirelli is not up to the task and the powers-that-be should never have let Michelin go…! See what I mean; they’ll never win.
If Aprilia, Ducati, KTM and, to a slightly lesser degree, Honda left Thailand with smiles on their faces, then the same cannot be said for Yamaha. After the race, the factory and Pramac teams took the unprecedented step of stopping their riders from speaking to the media, preferring someone from senior management do the talking.
And it wasn’t pretty; “We are at a point where we see the difference that separates us from the fastest, and we have a mountain to climb. “It won’t be overnight, there’s no magic. Every time we go out on the track, we discover things,” said Yamaha chief Paolo Pavesio.
It’s hard to understand how Yamaha is messing up the development of its new V4 engine and the new M1 chassis so comprehensively. It’s not as if this is a new manufacturer on the MotoGP scene! If pre-season predictions are to be believed, all this stumbling has cost the team Fabio Quartararo, potentially on his way to Honda in ’27, while Jorge Martin has every right to wonder if his rumoured move to Yamaha from Aprilia is a good move.
That’s another strange thing; in the pre-season, there was a huge amount of noise about who-rides-where in 2027, with deals supposedly done and dusted and a lot of big-name moves slated to be confirmed before racing commenced. But that has all gone rather quiet, and the first race weekend has been and gone, and we are no clearer on the situation. Maybe wiser and cooler heads prevailed?
Of course, the game of musical chairs has another very interesting consequence; in June and September, teams will have dedicated test days for their 2027 machines, complete with 850 cc engines, Pirelli tyres and vastly reduced suspension and aero technology. But who do they entrust that testing to?
For example, look at Yamaha (although you can apply the same thinking to all the teams); both Quartararo and Rins look likely to be wearing different-coloured leathers next year, so does Yamaha allow them to develop the 850 cc, Pirelli-shod M1, only for them to take that development data to their new teams? Alternatively, does Yamaha allow Quartararo and Rins a leave of absence to test for their new teams in the middle of a season, potentially gifting an advantage to their rivals? The answer in any sane world has to be “no!”
Similarly, Yamaha’s new-for-2027 riders will have no experience of the new bike until the first post-season test, usually the day after the final race, by which time it will be very late to begin making modifications based on their feedback. The riders who are definitely staying with their current team into 2027- Marco Bezzecchi, Johann Zarco, Diogo Moreira and Toprak Razgatlioglu so far – will have a nice advantage here.
This is a scenario that is completely new for MotoGP; the biggest rules shake-up in decades alongside the biggest rider-market shake-up in the history of the sport, with 18 out of the 22 riders out of contract at the end of the year. Of course, there will be others who are likely to remain with their current manufacturer – Marc Marquez, Jack Miller and Fermin Aldeguer are likely to re-sign for 2027 and beyond – but, until that is all confirmed, the testing conundrum will be a thorn in every team manager’s side.
All of this just serves to make us realise how much we have missed MotoGP in the off-season; not just the on-track action but the minutiae and intrigue in pit and paddock that fill the gaps in between lap times. 2026 is going to be a 22-round journey of insane speed, surprises, races, chases, thrills and spills, euphoria and disappointment; if the first race is anything to go by, we’re going to be in for a real treat.
