Are we to assume that, when a track runs at predominantly left-hand-turn anti-clockwise circuits, we can expect Marc Marquez to reign supreme? If that is the case (he’s won at over 60% of the races held at such circuits), then he’s going to have to make hay at the two remaining anti-clockwise circuits left on the calendar – Philip Island and Valencia – because some tracks are coming up that are expected to favour Jorge Martin, Marco Bezzecchi and Aprilia.
The season thus far has been one of two halves; in the first seven races, Bezzecchi and Aprilia were the dominant force, but in the next six races, Marc Marquez has been all but unstoppable. In the last six race weekends, Marquez has taken 166 points, courtesy of four GP victories, three Sprint victories and a Sprint third place. The nearest challenger to that is Ai Ogura on 111 points. Championship leader, Jorge Martin, has scored 100, while early title favourite, Marco Bezzecchi, has scored only 53 points.
Before Hungary – round eight – Marquez’ Grand Prix record was two missed races, two retirements and a 4th, 5th and 7th place, alongside two Sprint wins and a Sprint second place. Since Hungary, he’s won four out of the six races and three Sprints, but when he hasn’t won in the GPs, he’s scored only a brace of seventh places.
By contrast, Marco Bezzecchi’s season might have looked as though it’s been derailed, but he’s only five points behind Marquez and 24 behind his teammate, Martin, at the top of the table. A brace of second places and a fourth supplemented his early four victories out of seven races. Since Hungary, he’s had two retirements, two missed races and two braces of third places (Sprint and GP) in England and at Aragon. So, it’s all balancing out between himself and Marquez.
Then there’s Martin leading the championship with only one victory, but four second places and a third in GPs, and three Sprint wins. It’s happened before; the two main protagonists fighting it out, leaving the door open for a sneaky rear-guard action by a rival.
In Aragon, despite a record-setting pole position, Marco Bezzecchi had nothing for Marquez; the first corner in both races demonstrated that Marquez put absolutely everything into getting past before Bez and had a chance to get ahead and build a lead. It worked in the Sprint race, but in the Grand Prix, Marquez’ rear ride-height device failed to disengage (or he failed to disengage it!), leaving him defenceless coming out of the second corner. It didn’t seem to matter as Martin, briefly in second, went backwards to finish fifth and Bezzecchi lost out on the drag race down the main straight after leading for five laps. It was thrilling stuff as the two bikes were sucked towards each other at 340 km/h, but there was just something inevitable about Marquez’ progress; you always felt he was just biding his time.
Surprisingly, the main challenge to Marquez came from Pedro Acosta, who drafted past Bezzecchi on the heels of Marquez. If Acosta was never able to mount a serious challenge for the lead, he at least kept Marquez honest by never being more than a few tenths behind for half the race. It was almost inevitable, however, that Marc suddenly pulled the pin and set four blistering laps in a row to completely demoralise Acosta and seal the victory. Bezzecchi did well to take his second podium of the weekend, but he must be wondering what he has to do to beat Marquez. Thanks to his early-season success – while Marc was still finding his post-2025-injury feet – Bez is only five points behind Marquez after Aragon and still only 24 behind his teammate, but with the Ducati rider on a roll and Martin so far untroubled by injury, it’s always too early to start losing to either of them.
But was this weekend really a problem for Bezzecchi and Aprilia? Let’s not forget that Bez is still recovering from injury, so to post a new lap record, pole position and post a brace of damage-limiting third places wasn’t exactly a bad weekend’s work. His 2026 record is similar to Marquez’ if you take into account races missed, retirements and race wins – two, two and four each respectively – and moreover, in the races where he hasn’t won, Bez has scored a lot better than Marquez, which explains the mere five-point difference between the two in the table.
No, the pendulum may have swung Marquez’ way in the past six races, but Bez did enough in the first eight races to keep himself in the running. Marquez may have two more anti-clockwise tracks where he is expected to win, but so do Bezzecchi and Aprilia have tracks coming up where they can expect to be on top, which are also tracks where Ducati and Marquez might be expected to struggle a bit, so even a podium might not be on the cards; Misano with its fast right handers which Marquez does not like with his injured right shoulder, and The Red Bull Ring in Austria, where the Aprilia likes the stiffer carcass tyres that Michelin brings, better than the Ducati does.
Of course, Marquez has extensive experience of this sort of slugging-it-out situation in a championship’s second half, and he’s learned to play the percentage game when the odds don’t favour him or his bike, but he’s not getting enough points when he’s not winning to make the title a certainty, while Bez and Martin are. Let’s not forget also that Bezzecchi has the hunger for a first title and Martin would love to demonstrate that his title in 2024 was no flash in the pan.
The run to the championship flag is going to get very interesting.
As usual, Francesco Bagnaia had a dreadful weekend – his sixth Grand Prix DNF this season and his 12th GP DNF out of the last 19 rounds. For him, the end of the season cannot come soon enough, although he must be concerned about taking his troubles with him to Aprilia. His morale must be desperately low; if he has the same problems on a completely new bike, it will be difficult to overcome the mental state that he will sink into. Of course, it could very well be that a new team and bike will rejuvenate him, and the new RS-GP will have none of the problems of his Ducati GP26, enabling him to fight with confidence at the front once again.
There is an interesting comparison between Bagnaia and Marquez on the Ducati and Binder and Acosta on the KTM. Both Bagnaia and Binder have teammates who are performing on bikes that they themselves are incapable of doing anything with (although at least Binder is finishing races!)
This, in turn, raises a couple more interesting questions: can we automatically assume Acosta will be effective on the Ducati in 2027, and would Binder have been able to tame the Ducati had he jumped ship from KTM earlier in his MotoGP career? One scenario we will see play out, but the other is one of the fascinating what-ifs of racing.
If all the attention was on the leaders, there were, as usual, some very interesting battles going on further down the field that we, again as usual, saw little of on TV. The most interesting of which was Bastianini vs Moreira, who is quickly proving to be a bit of a find, given what he is doing on a Honda that no one else seems to be able to emulate. It was also good to see Johann Zarco back as well, and he did not disgrace himself, qualifying ninth and finishing ninth in the Sprint and 15th in the GP, mainly thanks to having a double long-lap penalty to serve.
On the rider front, Fermin Aldeguer has been confirmed as heading to VR46 for 2027, while Moto2 star Izan Guevara will fill Jack Miller’s place at Pramac Yamaha and Enea Bastianini is off to Trackhouse Aprilia. MotoGP is set to potentially lose a lot of riders to World Superbikes in 2027; Miller, Binder, Rins and Morbidelli are all in with a shout of race seats in the second-most important bike racing series in the world, and that can only be a good thing. It’s not that World Supers needs rejuvenating, but fresh race-winning blood is always a good way of shaking up the status quo.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Fabio Quartararo and Yamaha appears to be deteriorating daily. The team has apparently told the rider that he won’t be allowed to test next year’s Pirelli tyres at a post-Austria test. Quartararo has, therefore, told Yamaha that he won’t be testing any new parts for the 2027 bike; he won’t be “acting as a test rider, as I did this weekend in Aragon” and putting himself at risk for someone else’s benefit, he said.
You can see both sides of the argument; why would Yamaha want to give an advantage to a rider who will be riding for a rival team next year? But Quartararo feels that, because of all the work he has done on a bike that he will never ride, he should be allowed a test on the Pirellis.
There is another thing to consider. In Brno, at the 2027 bike test after the race, KTM allowed Pedro Acosta to ride its new bike, even though he is defecting to Ducati. The reasoning was simple; Acosta is the fastest rider KTM has, so why wouldn’t they want his input on the new bike? It’s the same for Yamaha; Quartararo is the team’s best rider, so why wouldn’t they want his input?
It all rather smacks of tit-for-tat bickering, doesn’t it?
