It’s called the Cathedral of Speed, and it’s a good description, for Assen is one of the most beautifully fast and sweeping circuits on the calendar. There are plenty of stop-and-go tracks, with sharp corners linked by long straights, but Assen is completely different; ultra-fast corner after ultra-fast corner with very few straights worth the name, the start-finish straight being the longest.
It’s also rather narrow, and the clever rider can utilise corner speed to prevent the rider behind from making a lunge on the brakes into the next corner. This is exactly what Marc Marquez did on both Saturday and Sunday, particularly the section at the end of the lap leading up to the chicane – one of the traditional overtaking spots – where his blistering speed in left-handers gave him enough of a margin at the chicane to prevent anyone getting by.
The 2025 Assen TT was Marc’s third consecutive Grand Prix weekend clean sweep – no other rider has managed that since the Sprint format was introduced in 2021. The Sunday victory also puts him equal with legend Giacomo Agostini on all-time premier class wins and only 11 behind his old rival Valentino Rossi; I, for one, will not be betting that the Italian’s record will still be standing in a year or so’s time.
There is even more for Marc’s rivals to be despondent about; the last two Grands Prix – Mugello and Assen – have been at tracks where he hasn’t previously shone, and yet he won them both. Assen was even more depressing for his rivals as he was battered and bruised after two very high-speed crashes in practice.
Then consider the next race on the calendar – the Sachsenring in Germany. Marquez has won there eleven times in 15 years: 2010, 2011, 2012 in Moto3 and Moto2; 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021 in MotoGP. Nope, not laying odds on this year’s race there, either!
Then consider the fact that Marc’s closest championship rival, his brother Alex, crashed out of the Main race in Assen, breaking a finger. Will he be fit for Germany? Even if he is, he’s now 68 points behind Marc, and no number of second places will close the gap if Marc is ahead of him at the finish line. Nor does it look as if Bagnaia can do anything to find a solution for his desperate inability to get the GP25 to work for him.
Nor, if it comes to that, does it look as if Yamaha, KTM, Aprilia or Honda are getting their acts together consistently. Aprilia, on the evidence of Assen, does at least have some cause for cautious optimism; Marco Bezzecchi taking a Sprint race third and Main race second, both of which could be construed as a two-finger salute to Jorge Martin, whose contract machinations continue to make headlines.
It would be fair to say that Martin has lost a lot of support and respect over his treatment of Aprilia. Being injured and unable or unwilling to return to the fray too soon is one thing, but to then kick sand in the face of Aprilia and attempt to activate a clause in his contract to get out of it a year early is quite another.
What that does is make us question if he really is fit enough to return, which might be unfair, or even downright inaccurate, but it’s an inevitable consequence of his actions. Certainly, the medical reports coming from Aprilia seem straightforward enough; things are healing nicely, but it’s taking a long time.
Then, put into the mix Bezzecchi’s victory at Silverstone and the pair of podiums in Assen, demonstrating that the Aprilia is the best of the rest among the MotoGP manufacturers, and it’s difficult to understand Martin’s “I want to leave” position.
Yes, he was hugely put out by Ducati’s decision to go for Marquez over him for the second factory seat, but signing for the factory Aprilia wasn’t exactly a hardship. So why has the relationship soured so quickly? It’s not as if he has been able to take part in the first ten rounds of the season and found the ’25 Aprilia RS-GP significantly lacking; he’s barely turned a wheel in anger and, when he has, he’s been far from fit. So why the desperation to jump ship? And, let’s face it, jump ship to the Honda, which is the only factory seat available in 2026; the RC213V hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in the past four and a half seasons.
Yes, everything is reset in 2027, meaning that theoretically, all teams will start on an even footing, and the resources of Honda can’t be underestimated, so that to get your feet under the table a year early and learn how the team works can never be a bad thing but surely any team would be wary of taking on a rider who so clearly feels that a contract is not worth the paper it is written on.
Now, Carmelo Espeleta, CEO of Dorna, has waded into the argument, stating that Martin will not be allowed to race for any other team until the contract situation with Aprilia is sorted out by the courts. Martin’s manager, Albert Valera, insists that Martin is a free agent for 2026, but it seems that Aprilia disagrees.
It’s a messy situation, the more so because it follows on from a stunning 2024 title-winning season, the first for a satellite team since the change to four-stroke engines back in 2002.
It was hoped that Assen would be a happy hunting ground for Yamaha, with its concentration of corners and no long straights, which should have theoretically played directly into Yamaha’s strengths; a stunning pole position lap seemed to confirm this, Quartararo living up to his 2025 qualifying promise. But the race was another matter, as the Frenchman struggled with grip, crashed out of the Sprint race and then, in the Main race on Sunday, got caught up in Fermin Aldeguer’s accident, which Quartararo managed to avoid but only by taking to the grass, dropping him well back. A recovery to tenth was good, but it could have been so much better.
KTM had its best weekend for some time, Viñales finishing sixth in the Sprint and following that up with a fifth in the Main race, with, surprisingly, Acosta ahead of him in fourth. Ironically, it seems that the legendary KTM engine power was a bit of an embarrassment for Viñales, who complained that he was getting rear wheelspin in fifth towards the end of the race!
“Regarding the tyre life, it’s the first track where I’ve faced it.” “In other tracks, normally on Sunday, it’s quite OK – I don’t have a drop. But here, there are many long corners, and this bike is so powerful!” said Viñales. “When you shift 4-5-6, the engine is massive.” I said, “Come on, you are spinning in fifth gear?” “I never had that in my life!” He continued: “Maybe I need to ride a little bit more carefully, because it wasn’t on the edge of the tyre, it was on the traction side.”
Too much power….? Aren’t these guys ever happy?
