The fun aspect of Aprilia’s domination of the 2026 season is that you never quite know from which Aprilia garage the dominant force is going to spring on any given weekend. So far, the only Aprilia rider not to win on a Saturday or Sunday is Ai Ogura, although he has taken a podium and has had very quick late-race pace in several Grands Prix. If he could just qualify better, then he’d be in line for regular podiums. Fernandez has won a Sprint, while Bezzecchi has won four Grands Prix and Martin has won one GP and a Sprint. If this is domination by a single manufacturer, then let’s have more, please!
Ducati isn’t completely out of the running. DiGiannantonio has been very effective, while Marc Marquez has been rather lacklustre, mainly due to unresolved injury issues. Alex Marquez was starting to get his season into shape before his horrendous crash in Spain. The best surprise in the Ducati camp has been a form of renaissance for Pecco Bagnaia, with three Sprint podiums and a brace of GP podiums. He led the Mugello race convincingly before Bezzecchi found his way past. Let’s hope he’s back on track towards the front.
There’s something about Mugello that always produces good racing. Right from the get-go, the action at the front was frenetic, Bagnaia and Bez making a break for it at the front, Martin lurking behind, while Marquez, Acosta, Aldeguer and Ogura fighting over fourth, the first pair having a ding-dong battle for most of the race; a lone KTM among the Italian hordes.
What is happening at KTM? Bastiannini, Binder and Viñales are floundering around in the midfield at best, further back, at worst. It’s only Acosta who’s seemingly able to make the RC16 work to his advantage and, even then, it looks like a fight. We’re not long out of the financial crisis for the company, and it’s hard to envisage investors putting up with continued millions being poured down the drain with no visible benefit. Acosta is Ducati-bound in 2027 (if rumours are to be believed), and it’s looking increasingly likely that Binder is out of a ride next year as well, so is KTM losing its two greatest assets? Bringing in Alex Marquez is no guarantee of success; just because he has been a revelation on the Ducati doesn’t mean anything, especially when everything changes next year. Of course, it could be that KTM gets its sums right with the new regulations in 2027 and is the team to beat. Then again…
What of Binder? His stock isn’t particularly high at the moment, and it would be a great shame to see him finish his MotoGP career on a whimper, after breaking into the class with so much promise and enjoying the early support of KTM with a long-term contract. It is not widely known what is going on behind closed doors at KTM, so who knows what role Binder has been playing in a team that appears to be in thrall to Pedro Acosta; has he been sacrificed at the altar of in-race development for the greater good, or is it simply that he hasn’t been able to unlock the potential of a bike that might not have much potential in it to be unlocked, Acosta’s performances notwithstanding?
Unfortunately for Binder, many promising talents are straining at the leash to be promoted from Moto2. Diogo Moreira made the transition this season, and his performances in Mugello – top ten in qualifying and cheekily running near the front in the early stages on the LCR Honda – were indications of a talent worth watching. There are a lot more like him competing in both Moto3 and Moto2 at the moment, and you can be sure that all the teams have got their eyes on the future, no matter what it means for the status quo right now. Motorcycle racing might be a sport, but it’s also a business, and the teams will do anything to protect that business and future-proof it. There’s nothing sentimental about it, and loyalty lasts only as long as the results keep coming.
It is an unhappy task to talk about Yamaha at the moment. The V4 engine is experiencing troubled development pains and wasting the talents of Quartararo, Rins, Miller and Razgatlıoğlu. Quartararo has been particularly scathing of the new engine and Yamaha in general, and post-race in Mugello, he cut a dejected figure.
It’s nothing new that the Yamaha is down on power and, therefore, straight-line speed; that’s been the case both with the inline four-cylinder engine and the new V4. But it seems the problems aren’t solely with the engine; the chassis just isn’t allowing the riders to do what they want, either.
Reflecting on 18th on the grid, 14th in the Sprint and 18th in the Main race, Quartararo could only say this: “If you ask me now, I’d say the motivation is gone. The truth is, there’s nothing positive to take from this Sunday… Right now, I’m very disappointed with the work we’ve done. I’m glad it’s over.” Those aren’t the words of a rider who’s going to give it his all, and you’d have to agree with him. He put a lot of faith in Yamaha and, yes, he delivered a title and a close-fought second place in 2021/22, but since then, Yamaha has squandered his talents, and it’s really difficult to see how they have got it so wrong so quickly. No, developing a new engine isn’t easy, but we’re not talking about a piss-willy operation here with no experience; this is Yamaha, for goodness’ sake, a team with not a few championships to its name this century. Of course, it will fight back, but they’ll do it without Quartararo.
It was a race weekend with little or no politics or conjecture as to who-rides-where in 2027. However, there was one troubling rumour in the week leading up to the race. It seems that the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom, are mulling over the idea of banning second bikes for riders, in the name of cutting costs.
One of the governing body’s jobs is to rein in spending, in order to prevent the sport from collapsing in on itself. Fair enough. But this is motorsport, with all the attendant risks of crashes and mechanical mayhem at any stage during a race weekend, let alone rain disrupting play during a race.
Are they trying to say that, should a rider crash in the very first practice session, he has to wait for the bike to be returned to the pits before the mechanics can get to work on what might be simply bodywork replacement or might be a full rebuild, before the rider can head out on track again? That might be only Saturday morning if the crash occurs on Friday.
What about Saturday or Sunday pre-race warm-up? A crash there means no qualifying. A crash in qualifying? No Sprint race presence and a back-of-the-grid start for the Main race. Rain during the race? No flag-to-flag any more, so the race is stopped and probably abandoned, unless they allow tyre-changing during the race, which isn’t entirely out of the question, although the set-up of the bikes is completely different for wet and dry races. How about a rider being taken out by another rider at any stage, pre-race, through no fault of his own; his weekend is fatally compromised.
No, this is an alley down which the governing body cannot be allowed to venture, and we can only hope that calm heads will prevail. There are many ways to cut costs, but cutting the throat of the sport is not the way to go about it.
Thankfully, there’s only a week’s break before we’re in Hungary. The track at Balaton Park might be the least suitable on the calendar for 300-horsepower missiles, and about as far from the glorious speed of Mugello as it’s possible to get, but it’s a different type of challenge for the teams and riders, and at least we don’t have to wait two weeks!
Talking of speed, Jorge Martin broke Brad Binder’s top speed record at Mugello, raising the bar from Brad’s 366.1 km/h, set in 2023, to 368.6 km/h. With the reduction in displacement for 2027, is this now an all-time record?
