What a difference a week makes! From no one saying much about who’s riding for whom in 2027 over the first nine race weekends, to a bunch of not entirely unexpected rider announcements, along with a significant technical announcement.
Perhaps most importantly, there have been some overall rule changes. Firstly, the front suspension launch device has been banned. This device locked the front suspension in the compressed position for the start of the race in order to reduce acceleration-sapping wheelies off the line, and was unlocked by the heavy braking into the first turn. No more! After the practice starts and both races in Assen, opinion was divided as to whether this was a good thing or made starts more dangerous.
Secondly, spacing between rows of bikes on the grid has been increased in an effort to prevent too much bunching into the first corner. This means that a good qualifying will be more important than ever. The grid remains as a 3×3 layout. This will only come into effect at the next race, in Germany.
Also, it has been mandated that no manufacturer will have more than six bikes on the grid, between factory and satellite teams. As it stands, Ducati is the only manufacturer with six bikes on the grid in 2026, although that is down from the eight bikes it had up to the end of 2024.
Now that all the teams have agreed on a new deal with Dorna and Liberty, which stabilises the grid for the next five years, there have been more announcements regarding who rides where in 2027.
Pecco Bagnaia is definitely leaving Ducati and has signed a four-year deal to join Aprilia, alongside Bezzecchi. In Bagnaia’s place, Ducati has finally announced Pedro Acosta; again, not startling news, but it’s now official. Meanwhile, Marc Marquez has committed to Ducati until the end of 2028.
Coming into the Assen weekend, Marc Marquez stated that this would be a race to endure, rather than expect victory or even podium challenges. Worryingly for his rivals, Marc Marquez has named both the Sachsenring and Silverstone as the two tracks where he will “start to attack!” The Sachsenring race is two weeks after Assen, while Silverstone is the first race back after the summer break, which starts after Sachsenring and lasts for a month.
If that’s the case – that Marquez will “start attacking” – then what has he been doing up to now…? A double victory in Hungary and a podium and a win in Czechia; if that’s taking it easy to favour his injured shoulder, then God help everyone else when he is fully fit. Assen might not be his best track, but he came away with his points deficit to the title leaders unchanged (and also himself uninjured, which is always something to celebrate), and that has to be a big win.
The Sprint race was excellent: a 1-2 for Trackhouse, four Aprilias in the top five, the top eight separated by a hair throughout the race; top-class action from start to finish. To have both Aprilia and Ducati fighting it out at the front is just what the sport needs. KTM, in the hands of Acosta, has made a good, if patchy, effort at joining the Italians at the top table, while Honda is making progress but, surely, Yamaha can’t wait for this year to be over and to start afresh in 2027. Rarely has a rider been so despondent as Fabio Quartararo, claiming that his Yamaha M1 has “zero grip, zero turning and zero power…” He, too, can’t wait for 2027.
The Grand Prix itself gave us much more of the same thrilling action and hectic accidents, alongside machine unreliability for Bagnaia and personal unreliability for Acosta. Bezzecchi’s crash looked terrible – let’s face it, wherever you crash at Assen, it’s going to be very fast – but it seems like he got away without serious injury. But it also means no points on a Sunday yet again – that means just six points from four races – and Jorge Martin taking over at the top of the table. Indeed, the top eight in the championship are now separated by only 63 points, with the halfway point in the season fast approaching. Surprisingly, DiGiannantonio now sits third in the table, a mere 16 points behind Martin. Where did that come from? No one has even mentioned Diggia’s name in terms of the title thus far, and yet here he is.
All those chasing Martin and Bezzecchi for the title are GP winners (apart from Acosta, although he has won a Sprint) and, given the ability of everyone to make both huge gains and huge mistakes, not to mention recent history which has seen large points-deficits overturned, satellite teams taking championships and miraculous comebacks, there’s no way you can pick a winner. At the beginning of the season, it looked like Bezzecchi’s title to lose, and now it seems as if he is doing just that, although things change from race to race, so nothing is certain.
In the GP, the Trackhouse Aprilias were the class of the field, but they didn’t have it all their own way and were made to fight for the victory. After Fernandez’s Sprint victory, it was Ai Ogura’s turn to take his first GP win, with Fernandez second and Martin third. At one point, Ogura was over 1.5 seconds off the lead after a mistake had dropped him to fourth, but he showed that his late-race pace has been no flash in the pan in recent rounds and simply made everyone else look amateurish. Even a malfunctioning rear ride-height device couldn’t stop him.
In both Sprint and GP, he got the hole-shot from second on the grid and finished second and first, respectively, clearly demonstrating the advantage a good qualifying gives; previously, Ogura had to spend too much time recovering from lacklustre qualifying performances, which, despite his late pace, has left him with too much to do to reach and challenge the leader.
For Trackhouse, also, this was a brilliant weekend: pole position, one-two in both races. Taking nothing away from the Trackhouse personnel, but the fact that they find themselves campaigning the best bike on the grid is doing them no harm at all, and in Fernandez and Ogura, they have two very hungry riders; Fernandez in particular has a lot to prove, given that his seat is looking under threat for 2027. Rumours have him sitting on a one-year Trackhouse and two-year Tech3 options. Mind you, Tech3 might be closed, thanks to rumours linking Luca Marini and Moto2 star Senna Agius with the team for 2027. Bastianini is said to have one of the Trackhouse places, while Ai Ogura appears to be off to the factory Yamaha squad alongside Jorge Martin, Quartararo heading off to Honda and Rins’ fate yet to be decided, as is that of Binder, Miller and Viñales.
We don’t often speak about Moto3 in these pages, largely because the races are often so chaotic, with multiple changes of lead over the course of a single lap, let alone the whole race, that to write any meaningful report would take forever.
But one development is worthy of note. Dorna has announced that, from 2028, the Moto3 class will switch to a single-bike class, the bike being provided by Yamaha. Of more importance is the fact that they will be powered by a heavily modified version of the Yamaha R7 engine, housed in a prototype chassis. The engine will have 90 horsepower and the bike an overall weight of 120 kg. They will be faster than the current 250 cc Moto3 bikes and effectively close the gap between Moto3 and Moto2, which uses the Triumph 765 cc engine.
All this is being done to reduce costs – the aim is to be 50% cheaper than the current Moto3 in order to make this first rung on the ladder accessible to as many riders and teams as possible. According to Carlos Ezpeleta of Dorna, the new rules are “an important step for safety, equality of the riders, the racing, and aligning the riders towards MotoGP.”
Well, sorry, but I call bullshit on that statement. Or most of it. Safety you can never argue with, but as for “the racing”, well, look at Moto2. All bikes use the same engine, and the races are largely processional, with very little action. Moto3, as it stands at the moment, is brilliant, and I fear that making everyone use the same engine and chassis will make everything too uniform and the fire will go out of the class; more power doesn’t necessarily mean better racing. I hope I am wrong.
Two weeks’ wait until Marquez’s playground, the Sachsenring. If everything goes to form, Marquez will close the gap to the Aprilias even further, but with the likes of Diggia, Ogura and Fernandez, not to mention both Martin and Bezzecchi, snapping at his heels, there is nothing to be gained in making a prediction.
