We might as well get this out of the way straight off the bat; Balaton Park in Hungary is just not the best track for MotoGP bikes or necessarily conducive to exciting racing. It’s too tight and twisty, and the bikes seem to be hardly able to get out of their own way. After the speed glories of Mugello, it’s a bit like a glorified go-kart track, but it’s on the calendar and the circus is going there whether we like it or not, and, at least, it’s a different challenge for the teams.

Mind you, the racing this time around wasn’t bereft of excitement and interest, perhaps because of the nature of the track, which brought more teams and riders into the mix than normal. Or that could simply have been through Jorge Martin’s clottish and cack-handed braking manoeuvre at the start of the GP on Sunday; taking out three-quarters of the Aprilia contingency and four of the expected front-runners will have that effect.

One thing that we did find out – as if we needed reminding – is that you write off Marc Marquez at your peril. Since his last surgery, he has been saying that it will take time for him to be fully fit again, that we mustn’t expect too much from him until the Czech GP at the earliest. And then he goes and achieves the treble in Hungary; pole position, Sprint and GP wins. OK, so maybe the slow nature of the track helped, as did the anti-clockwise direction, but championships have been won from as far back as Marquez is from points leader Bezzecchi, and, if the Aprilias can’t learn to play nice, then no one should bet against Marquez being there to pick up the pieces.

As mentioned, the nature of the track layout brought some new players into Q2, including Jack Miller (Yamaha) and Diogo Moreira (Honda). In the latter, there are all the hallmarks of another Pedro Acosta; a young and precocious talent, with no respect for the status quo and who, early indications suggest, will be on every team manager’s shortlist, and on a factory bike sooner rather than later.

Let’s not forget he’s riding a Honda that might be showing signs of improvement, but which is still several steps behind the Ducatis and Aprilias (and Acosta’s KTM!). In the last couple of races, he’s been running easily in the top half of the field, and it was no different in the Hungary Sprint; starting 11th, running sixth by lap two and finishing the race in seventh; the other Hondas finished 12th and 15th. And one of those is a former World Champion! Moreira then went on to finish sixth in the GP.

Acosta could do nothing about Marquez but still ran a solid second throughout and crossed the line in that position. What is he doing on the KTM that the other KTM riders can’t do? Enea Bastiannini seems to be second-best of the KTM runners, but Binder and Viñales are mired in the throes of lacklustre performances.

Is there something going on behind the scenes at KTM? Are Acosta and, to a lesser extent, Bastiannini getting the pick of the latest parts and tech, leaving Binder and Viñales with used or older parts and tech? What is fairly obvious is that Acosta certainly is the focus of the team right now, even if it is assumed he is defecting to Ducati for 2027. On the strength of his performances, you’d have to say that that is the right strategy for KTM, but is he only performing thus because of the best parts and tech?

What would have been even more galling for Binder and Viñales would have been being beaten to the line in the GP by Alex Marquez’s stand-in and current World Superbike rider, Iker Lecuona.

The start of the Grand Prix was a carbon copy of the Sprint, with Marquez taking the hole shot from Acosta, but that’s where the similarities come to a crashing halt, if you’ll pardon the pun. Jorge Martin thoroughly cocking up his braking is one thing, but taking out your team mate, a satellite Aprilia, and two Ducatis is quite another. For Martin, his closest title rival not gaining any points advantage from Martin’s non-finish would be some consolation, but a double long-lap penalty at the next race negates that advantage.

Whilst the dust was settling from that, Acosta was taking advantage of his decision to start on the soft rear tyre – while everyone around him was on the medium – and took the lead from Marquez and quickly stretched out a 1.5-second lead. But somehow, we couldn’t get worried; Michelin had assured the teams that the soft rear would last the race without a drop-off in performance, but there was just something predatory about Marquez’s presence in second place on the medium rear. This was confirmed as Marquez closed right up on Acosta and the pair engaged in a tussle for a couple of laps before Marquez made a pass stick, and that, to all intents and purposes, was that, the Spaniard taking his 100th MotoGP victory, which coincidentally was also Ducati’s 100th MotoGP victory!

Behind those two and Bagnaia running a lonely but secure third, there was a great battle for fourth. Miller had been a beneficiary of the chaos up ahead at the start and was running fourth. Right with him, however, were Marini, Moreira, Mir, Ogura and Lecuona, all of whom got past Miller at one stage or another. As is becoming usual, Mir crashed out, while Ogura used his late-race pace and scythed his way through the lot of them to lie fifth, two seconds behind Marini, a gap that was quickly closed, the Aprilia passing the Honda on the penultimate lap. That made the top ten, at the finish, Ducati, KTM, Ducati, Aprilia, Honda, Honda, Ducati, Yamaha, KTM, KTM, Binder taking that last spot. Unsuitable the Balaton Park track might be, but it does throw up interesting results!

An emphatically successful weekend it might have been for Marquez – his second treble in succession at this circuit – but the man himself was quick to manage expectations;

“The comeback is still not finished because we won, but it’s a left circuit. There were only three right corners with hard braking points, so this helped me to breathe. I feel like I’m still far from my performance, from the way I want to ride. However, I’m still fast. Let’s see if we can continue, but now it’s time to enjoy this victory. The championship is super long, but at the moment, we are not in shape,” he said. “I don’t feel that I’m ready to fight, honestly speaking. This weekend, yes, but at Mugello we were 10 seconds behind the leader. So, let’s see. It depends a lot on Brno and Assen, and then on the summer break. I still have to reach my new 100%. And from that point I will understand.”

As for Martin’s issue that caused the crash, Jack Miller put the blame squarely on the front suspension locking devices used at the start of the races. Approaching the start line after the warm-up lap, you’ll see the riders braking sharply in order to lock the forks into a compressed state. This works with the rear suspension lowering device to prevent wheelies and aid faster acceleration.

When the riders brake for the first corner, weight is transferred to the front of the bike, and the fork lock unclips, so the suspension can work as normal through and out of the corner and for the rest of the race.

Miller’s point is that the need to unlock the forks necessitates unnaturally heavy braking, which is fine at a track such as Mugello, where the speed approaching the first corner is high, and so the braking forces are high. But, at Balaton Park, where speed into the first corner is much lower at the start, normal braking forces might not be sufficient to unlock the device, so the rider is forced to brake harder than necessary, which can upset the bike, as happened with Martin.

It all points to the sense in the 2027-on rule banning start devices and also suspension-lowering devices, as used throughout a race when exiting corners. As Miller said, if no one has them, then everyone is in the same boat.

Two weeks until the next race, in the Czech Republic, then Assen a week after that and Germany two weeks after that, before the month-long summer break. The title race is definitely getting interesting now, but who will head into the break with the advantage? Clever money is on Bezzecchi and Aprilia, but, as Hungary demonstrated, the first person you have to beat – or avoid on track is your team mate!

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?

Two things to take from the races this weekend: that trying to predict anything in MotoGP is pointless, and that these men are superhuman.

The least controversial – or shocking – of those is the unpredictability of the events in the Sprint and Main races, not to mention the closeness of the racing; the Sprint winning margin was the closest in Sprint history, while the Main race result, even without the shock exits and incidents, was something that no one could have predicted.

Talking of predictions, who would have predicted before the weekend that we would have two factory KTMs running at the front during practice and qualifying? Who would have predicted that one of those KTMs would crash out of the Sprint race at the first corner and then have his bike fail as he approached the grid for the start of the Main race and have to divert into the pits to get his second bike, starting dead last in the process, yet still finish seventh?

Who then would predict that the other factory KTM would run right at the front in all three attempts at racing the Main race, only to have its own technical issue that would spark the horrific accident to Alex Marquez that stopped the race for the first time? Who would then predict that the same rider would then be fighting at the front of the truncated Main race, only to fade at the last before being punted off at the very last corner of the race?

Who would have predicted a Honda – a satellite Honda, at that – would be running at the front after the first Main race start and then a second Honda – factory, this time – would be in contention for the win after the third start, taking a podium spot and then losing that position for a tyre pressure infringement?

Who would have predicted Fabio DiGiannantonio winning for VR46, as rumours swirl around him moving to the factory KTM team for 2027? Not I. Pecco Bagnaia taking the Ducati factory squad’s first podium in eleven races? Nope! Jorge Martin threatening to overturn Marco Bezzecchi’s points lead only to be taken out by fellow-Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez? Nope! DiGiannantonio being skittled out by debris from the Marquez crash, clutching his hand in pain, and yet somehow restarting his bike and making it back to the pits in time to take the restart and win the race! A rather eventful hour for him!

All brilliantly unpredictable, especially if you have no particular favourite rider and just want to see good racing right to the very end.

But we also saw the dark side of the sport, or what could very easily have been the darkest of dark sides of the sport. Look at that crash of Alex Marquez; in past decades of motorcycle racing, he wouldn’t have survived that crash. Indeed, it’s hard to understand how Alex Marquez survived that crash. The wall was terrifyingly close, his speed was enormous, and the margin for survival was minuscule. And yet he not only survived, but suffered merely a fractured collarbone and a “marginal fracture” to his C7 vertebrae.

How? How is that possible?

Then look at Johann Zarco’s crash; how he was tossed around like a rag doll as his foot became entangled in Pecco Bagnaia’s Ducati’s rear wheel as it slid and tumbled into the gravel; how did he escape with nothing worse than torn ligaments in a knee and a small fracture at the bottom of the fibula? By rights, his leg should have been snapped in two.

Again, how? How did both those riders, in effect, walk away from those crashes? What happened in Barcelona is a long way from the outcome that many of their racing ancestors would have faced. Track safety today is light years ahead of how it used to be, and I’m not talking in terms of 60, 70 or 80 years ago; even in the 1990s, the riders were fighting for better safety conditions and the race organisers and track owners were pushing back against the inevitable, and some of the races were run at circuits that today’s riders would not even walk around, let alone ride or race.

There is obviously no way track owners can move every single obstacle from the vicinity of the track; local geography alone can preclude this. Of course, anything can be done, but how can you predict and protect against every single possible outcome of every possible accident scenario, especially on a straight? You just can’t.

This raises another interesting question: how much danger or risk is acceptable? Can you remove all the risk and retain the essence of the sport? Is risk a part of the challenge? From a spectator’s viewpoint, does making racing too sanitised remove the attraction? One racing insider once said that he believed that the public came to watch races to see the incidents and accidents, not just the racing. Who’s to say he is wrong?

You could argue that no one is holding a gun to the riders’ heads to make them race. Yes, there is a lot of money at stake, a lot of investment and a lot of livelihoods on the line, but should any rider on the grid decide that enough is enough, there would be hundreds of riders ready to take up the slack and put his life on the line, so any gesture of withdrawal on safety grounds is a hollow gesture in the greater scheme of things.

Risking their lives is exactly what the riders are doing, no matter how you dress up the spectacle. No one can race at those speeds with nothing but a bit of cow or kangaroo hide covering their body, some armour protection and a thin airbag and be truly safe. The risks are calculated as far as they can be, but they can never be removed.

Then there is the mental side of accidents. How did Pedro Acosta get back on the bike after seeing what he inadvertently caused to happen to Alex Marquez? How did any of the riders who saw it happen? Remember Austria 2020? Valentino Rossi cheated death by millimetres by not one but two flying wrecks, being visibly shaken as he pulled into the pits but getting back on and giving it as much as he ever had just a few minutes later. These men are made of different stuff than you and me.

Think of the Gresini or LCR team members seeing Alex Marquez and Johann Zarco’s accidents on the screens, and then having to wait for news from the marshals and medics. What must be going through their minds in that news vacuum? Will it be infinite relief or devastating grief? And it won’t have been the first time they have had to go through that process; that’s the nature of racing at any level. But having experienced it once, how do you go through it again?

Barcelona 2026 was the race that seemingly didn’t want to finish! One red flag is rare; two red flags are rarer still; two red flags with less than the required distance covered to declare a result are almost unheard of. But that’s what happened, and the racing was brilliant throughout. How fantastic to see not only a KTM running at the front but also a couple of Hondas; not only running at the front but maintaining that position through merit and not luck. OK, so if the race had been a full-distance affair, then maybe the Hondas would have faded – or Mir crashed in his efforts to keep up – just as Pedro Acosta’s tyres faded despite being only 12 laps old. But it was still great to see some different bikes running at the front.

Jorge Martin was mightily unimpressed with his race, as well he should be, but to take it out on his team when he came back to the pits was a little harsh. The adrenaline must have been flowing in abundance after 12 laps of seething about the crash, and his gander was definitely up. It might not have been so bad if it hadn’t been another Aprilia that took him out, but that’s only conjecture. The main thing is that he saw a potential victory and championship points lead wither to a larger points deficit than when the race started. We’re still only at the beginning of the season, but as the man said, it’s never too late to start winning, but it’s always too early to start losing.

In all this, spare a thought for Brad Binder. Mighty in practice and qualifying, only to be taken out at the first corner of the first lap of the Sprint race, then suffering a bike problem on the warm-up lap of the Main race, causing him to push the bike off the grid just as the lights were about to go out. He could start from the pit lane on his spare bike, but it looked like a forlorn hope. That was before all the mayhem up ahead, two restarts and post-race penalties that finally elevated him to seventh! Not at all what he would have wanted from such a promising start, but to get through all that with a significant points haul must be some consolation?

For KTM also, it was a troubling weekend; a technical fault for Binder on the line, a technical fault forcing Bastiannini out of the first Main race and a technical fault causing Acosta to slow suddenly and trigger the Marquez accident. It seems that all the faults were unrelated, but the FIM technical people were right to question the team, to ensure that it wasn’t a pattern and might happen again, with similar devastating results.

There are two weeks for everyone to lick their wounds before we head to Mugello over the last weekend of May. Time enough for us to lie down in a dark room, recover and collect our thoughts! Whether we will see both Marquez brothers and Zarco back in action is unknown, but what we do know is that, when they do return, they’ll be racing as hard as ever, as if nothing had happened.

As I said at the beginning, superhuman!

There was always the feeling that, in Jorge Martin, here was more than a one-title talent; that his 2024 title-winning season had not been a flash-in-the-pan. 2025 would have gone better had he been fit and, now that he is – and with the best bike on the grid just as it reaches its peak – he’s showing all his old flair. Even if he had been fit in 2025, would the combination of Martin and Aprilia RS-GP have been enough to stop Marquez? We’ll never know, of course, but on the evidence of France 2026, is it so far-fetched an idea?

It has taken Martin a bit longer to get to grips with the Aprilia RS-GP than Bezzecchi, but that is only to be expected, given the work Bez put in through 2025, ending that year and starting 2026 undefeated for five races. Now that Martin has found his rhythm and feeling on the bike, he could really be a thorn in Bez’s side. The contract shenanigans in which he indulged while injured in 2025 didn’t do his reputation any good, but he’s just so good to watch on track that you have to forgive that indiscretion, coming at a time when he should have been thinking about nothing other than recovery and not giving in to the demons in his head.

His Sprint race victory in France was just like the Martin of 2024, devastating the six riders in front of him on the grid to lead out of the chicane on the first lap. Who goes round the outside of the leader – his teammate, don’t forget – in the first corner of the chicane on the first lap? It’s just not done. Well, now it is.

From that point, he was never in any trouble from the chasing pack. Marquez, for his part, slumped backwards before a hideous-looking high-side took him out. That broke a bone in his foot to go with the shoulder that still isn’t fully healed. His still-recovering and fragile body doesn’t need any more incidents like that, and you’d have to say that his chances of retaining the title are looking slim right now.

You have to wonder, if Marquez knew about the shoulder issue, why didn’t he opt to miss the French GP in favour of surgery immediately after the Jerez race, to be potentially fit for the Barcelona Catalunya race and the test immediately after, which is vitally important for any manufacturer? Now he may miss Barcelona and also Mugello, which, in the light of the Aprilia dominance, means he is going to be too late to mount a serious championship challenge, given that he is already 71 points down on Bezzecchi and only one less on Martin. Another three races, like France and either Martin or Bezzecchi, will be uncatchable, except by each other.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the GP26 – Alex Marquez ran away with the Jerez race convincingly on one such, and Marquez has two Sprint wins to his name, not to mention the new lap record in Q1 in France – but, as we have seen so often throughout history, just because a bike is a winner, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to ride. If anyone can get the best out of it, it’s Marc Marquez, but the question of whether it suits Marquez has been masked by his physical issues. The second half of the season, with perhaps a fully-fit Marquez, will be interesting.

So, a dominant win for Martin, a fine second place for Bagnaia and a damage-limiting third for Bezzecchi in the Sprint. But what could the main race bring? Was there any way it could be as entertaining as the Sprint?

It always seems to rain at Le Mans. A statistic flashed up on the screen before the race began: 12 out of the 25 races held there have been wet, so it’s still less than half, but it feels like more. Sure enough, race day dawned wet, although while the Moto3 guys raced on a wet track, by the time of the Moto2 race, the track was dry and the MotoGP riders went to the grid with full slicks and a dry set-up, although it was notable that all the “wet” bikes were lined up prominently in the pit lane. As flag-to-flag races invariably deliver thrilling races and unexpected results, is it wrong to wish for rain halfway through a race?

Sure enough, on the grid, just as riders had made their tyre choices for the race, there were a few drops of rain, and nothing must put the shivers up a rider’s spine more than seeing drops of rain on the screen when you have slick tyres on at the start of a race. It ultimately came to nothing and, perhaps in light of what came to pass, it’s good that it didn’t.

Martin failed to make as good a getaway as in the Sprint and remained in seventh, while Bezzecchi went serenely on his way, Quartararo, Acosta, DiGiannantonio and Bagnaia following close behind. Quartararo was looking good, but he was running a soft front tyre when all the others were running a hard one, and it was obvious he would fade as the race went on. Fade he did, but not as drastically as in other races. I like Quartararo, and I’d love to see him fighting at the front with a genuine chance of winning, not just through taking risks on setup or tyre choice.

And then there is the mercurial Bagnaia. Pole position, second in the Sprint, running fourth in the Main race, getting up to second, only to lose it at the chicane on lap 17 and be done for the day. The pole position was encouraging, as was his race pace, but he has no answer for the Aprilias, and his consistency sucks. With Marquez out through injury and Bagnaia crashing, that brings the factory Ducati’s Grand Prix podiumless streak to ten races. Certainly not enough to set alarm bells ringing, but not encouraging either.

Acosta was making a nuisance of himself, fighting with Quartararo over second early on, but despite this, Bezzecchi wasn’t getting away at the front, the gap being a second and a bit at its widest. Martin was making progress, passing Ogura and DiGiannantonio, but being 2.5 seconds behind the leader, could he make a difference at the front?

Before you knew it, however, this was looking like a possibility. Bagnaia’s crash removed one obstacle, but Martin’s sheer pace meant that a showdown with Bezzecchi was becoming increasingly inevitable, and so it came to pass, Martin passing DiGiannantonio and Acosta before closing the gap quickly and taking the lead with three laps to go. When last did we see Bezzecchi being overtaken for the lead of a race? Martin showed us two completely different ways of winning a race in one weekend – lead from the front and fight from behind – showing us that we have not heard the last of this internal Aprilia struggle.

Meanwhile, Ai Ogura was yet again proving his worth on the Trackhouse Aprilia and was working his way up to third, to give Aprilia its first-ever podium lock-out and the first Japanese rider dry-race podium place since 2006. He threatened to do it in America before mechanical gremlins spoiled his party, but now, he has his first MotoGP podium. Is it too much to regret on his behalf Ogura’s decision to leave Aprilia at the end of 2026? Of course, there’s no knowing if Aprilia will enter the new-rules era with any form of success, but success breeds success.

After his stunning start to the season, Bezzecchi leaves France with another two podiums, but when your teammate has closed the points gap to one point with a double-victory, mere podiums are not going to cut it.

Yamaha yet again endured a difficult race, Quartararo’s sixth place notwithstanding. Toprak Razgatlioglu’s Yamaha expired on the sighting lap, meaning he had to race his back-up wet set-up bike, meaning that, if it did start raining, he had nothing to swap to. Rins finished an anonymous 12th, and Miller finished behind Toprak.

KTM were in a similar position; Acosta and, to a lesser extent, Bastiannini were working away at the front, finishing fifth and seventh, while their fellow-KTM riders had races to forget; Binder crashed out on lap 21, having qualified second to last, while Viñales’ replacement Jonas Folger crossed the line 73 seconds behind the winner! Where is the logic of replacing a rider with another who clearly has no right to be there? What possible good does that do KTM in terms of in-race development data?

In terms of behind-the-scenes activity, Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta explained that it was taking time to ratify a new agreement between Liberty Media/Dorna and the teams for 2027 onwards. The teams are looking for a larger slice of the revenue pie in light of Liberty’s acquisition of a majority holding in MotoGP. That will probably happen, and neither side seems worried by the delay, but one consequence is that rider announcements have been put on hold, for whatever reason.

At the start of the season, everyone concerned was confident that decisions and announcements would be made almost before the first wheel had turned in anger at the first round. That didn’t happen and, despite the rumours, we’re still not much clearer as to who will ride where in 2027. We do know that Bezzecchi is staying at Aprilia, with Zarco and Moreira remaining at LCR Honda. Marc Marquez is likely to stay at Ducati, but Bagnaia is being linked with a move to the factory Aprilia team, while Jorge Martin might be off to Yamaha to replace a Honda-bound Quartararo, Ai Ogura joining Martin at Yamaha, while Moto2 star David Alonso could join Quartararo at Honda.

DiGiannantonio looks set to head to the factory KTM team, replacing factory Ducati-bound Acosta. Will Alex Marquez bag the second factory KTM seat and, if so, where does that leave Brad Binder or Maverick Viñales, who was rumoured to be heading to the factory KTM team from Tech3 KTM, which might become Tech3 Honda next year?

Gresini will stay with Ducati and could field Enea Bastiannini and another Moto2 star, Dani Holgado, while current Gresini rider Fermin Aldeguer could move to VR46.

Confused? You should be!

Just a week to wait for the next race, in Barcelona, Catalunya. Personally, I’m not making any predictions. OK, so Martin just had a good weekend, and it’s been building for a while, but such is the see-saw nature of MotoGP at the moment, who’s to say that he will be in the ascendancy next time out? Look at Alex Marquez; dominant winner in Jerez, only to crash out early in France. If Martin or Bezzecchi can’t dominate in Barcelona, then who will?

The quality of racing is so high at the present time that, being so spoiled, we lament a processional race, such as was served up on Sunday in Jerez. Saturday was exceptionally exciting, which only made Sunday a bit of a letdown, despite the fact that there were some significant retirements and a different-looking podium.

Alex Marquez had looked the whole weekend as if he were in complete control, and his Gresini team gave him the tools to make the most of it. Thus, it was no surprise that he duly took up position at the front of the field shortly after the lights went out and was never headed, to record his second consecutive Spanish GP victory, with Bezzecchi second and DiGiannantonio third.

Marc Marquez crashed scarily out of second place, and Bagnaia retired with front brake issues, meaning that no factory Ducati has been on the podium for nine Grands Prix races, and that hasn’t happened since 2014.

Marco Bezzecchi could do nothing about Alex Marquez, and so his laps-led record fell, as did his winning streak of five races, but he did extend his lead at the head of the championship table.

Aprilia had all four bikes in the top six, while Yamaha filled five of the last seven places (Yamaha test rider Augusto Fernandez was a wild card entry and finished last). To add insult to injury, Joan Mir completed two long lap penalties and still finished ahead of every Yamaha other than Quartararo, and even he was less than half a second ahead at the flag.

The KTMs were underwhelming, and Zarco had a very good day on the Honda. And that’s possibly about all you can say about Sunday.

Ahh, but Saturday? That was something else.

Often, the concentrated format of the Sprint races throws up frenetic action, and Jerez was no different. It was also the first flag-to-flag Sprint race in the format’s history, with riders able to swap to wet tyre-shod bikes when the rain arrived. And that caused chaos and controversy.

The race started dry, and Marc Marquez streaked into an early lead, while Jorge Martin made a blasting getaway to lie fourth from tenth on the grid, turning that into third before the first lap was out. Then, heartbreakingly, braking into the first turn, Martin’s front brake discs were glowing bright red, which isn’t something you see on MotoGP bikes very often. That signalled his immediate retirement. Meanwhile, Aprilia’s chances had been dealt another blow as Marco Bezzecchi plummeted to the back off the line when Alex Marquez’s visor tear-off lodged under Bez’s back wheel, causing him to lose all drive off the line. Not the first time we’ve seen that, and maybe there needs to be a rule about tear-offs being removed on the grid?

With ten laps to go, Marc was well out in front, brother Alex struggling to get past an impressive Zarco, who then had a bit of a ding-dong with DiGiannantonio over third place, as the white flag came out, signalling that the pit lane was open to swap bikes. That can only have meant one thing: the rain had arrived, but not so heavy that all riders chose to stay out for another four or five laps, by which time, Alex had reeled in Marc and taken the lead.

Now the rain was really coming down, and so cue the controversy. Marc Marquez slid gently off to the outside of the final Lorenzo hairpin, leading onto the pit straight. He kept the bike running, picked it up and then proceeded to ride across the track and across the grass on the inside of the corner, making his way to the pit lane to swap bikes. Was that legal? MotoGP is pretty strict about track limits, and had Marc not only broken them but also gained an unfair advantage?

That would no doubt be decided after the race, but it all looked academic as, when he rejoined the race, he was way down in 17th place. However, just as the academic looked likely, all those up front who hadn’t changed bikes were tiptoeing around a streaming wet track on the wrong tyres. And that caught out Alex Marquez, allowing DiGiannantonio into the lead, but it was clear that all those who had changed bikes early were going to be in the podium seats.

One of those was Brad Binder, who had been the first to make the pit call and had left the pits ahead of all the other early stoppers. But he messed up the opportunity by sliding off, although he rejoined to finish a disappointed fourth.

Meanwhile, up front, Bezzecchi crashed out and, amazingly, Bagnaia was leading, but Marc Marquez clearly had the better pace and took the lead with one lap to go, a lead he held to take the most unprecedented victory. I’ve been checking, and it seems that, not since the Senior race at the 1965 Isle of Man TT has a rider crashed and gone on to win a Grand Prix race. In that case, it was Mike Hailwood who crashed his MV Agusta at a corner called Sarah’s Cottage, but remounted to take the victory.

But was Marquez’ victory legal? Quite a few riders were vocal about it, claiming that Marquez should have been disqualified or, at least, been given a penalty. But the stewards disagreed and, given their reasoning, you’d have to say they’re right.

The white line the riders have to respect on pit entry is the line on the inside of the pit entry curves. On exit, it is the white solid line on the right, or track side of the exit. Marquez therefore did not touch the inside white line on pit entry, nor did he cross a green-painted piece of asphalt, which would have caused a penalty. He didn’t endanger any riders after his crash when he crossed the track as they had all passed. He adhered to the pit lane speed limit and, even though he crashed out on the circuit, he did not receive any instruction from the marshals, so he had not disobeyed any orders from them, which would have meant leaving the circuit altogether and returning to the pits via the access roads.

So, his victory stands, whether you like it or not.

A big question that has arisen from Jerez is, have Ducati caught up with Aprilia? Even without Martin’s brake-related retirement and Bezzecchi’s tear-off affected Sprint start in the Sprint race, neither looked to have any answer to the pace of Alex Marquez’ GP26, in both Sprint and Main races, second, fourth, fifth and sixth for Aprilia in the latter notwithstanding.

Significantly, the satellite Ducatis are making the factory bikes look a bit second-rate at the moment. Add to this Marc Marquez’ physical fitness and Bagnaia’s mental fortitude at present, and it’s not a golden age for the factory team right now.

This is shaping up to what could be a brilliantly close MotoGP season, as weekend domination seesaws between Ducati and Aprilia, between factory and satellite teams and between former world champions and those looking for their first title.

The battle will be joined again in two weeks in France. Any bets?

I get that not everybody watches MotoGP, or is even aware of its existence, and that includes those who are fans of Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar, Australian Supercars, World Rally, Endurance Racing and so on. But, on the evidence of last weekend’s racing at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA), it amazes me that some won’t be aware or take the time to find out.

Of course, we’re all guilty; I rarely take notice of the American racing series although, if it’s on and I’m in front of a TV, I’ll watch it, but it’s not something that looms large in my life, no doubt much to the disgust of diehard fans who believe it to be the be-all and end-all of motorsport.

So, in fact, we just have to be satisfied with the fact that we like MotoGP and not worry too much about the rest of the world. Still, a weekend like the one we’ve just had makes me want to shout from the rooftops.

I might have to come clean and admit that. For me, COTA is the best circuit on the calendar. As soon as I think that, however, I then remember Portimao, Assen and Philip Island. But, no, I’m going to stick to my guns here.

COTA has everything: fantastically interesting layout (and long, at over 5km), lots of elevation changes (40m up to the first corner), that brilliant left-right-left-right-left-right-left sequence, plenty of very fast corners, the longest straight on the calendar (1.2km), lots of overtaking opportunities, and a seemingly endless triple apex right-hander. It is so different to the current generation of new and bland circuit designs that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been around for decades.

Another thing it has is American TV producers directing the cameras, and they are some of the best in the business, maybe thanks to the sheer amount of home-grown racing there is in the U.S. for them to practice on. They were helped at COTA by having a lot of action to choose from, but I can’t help feeling that some European producers would have concentrated on watching Bezzecchi riding around at the front, by and large on his own, rather than the action taking place behind. This particular race was one of the best-covered races I’ve seen for a long time.

It remains an outrage that Sprint victories don’t count towards a rider’s official race victory tally. On the evidence of the COTA Sprint race, that has to change.

DiGiannantonio performed another miracle and took pole position, for the second race in a row, and he was joined on the front row by Bezzecchi and Acosta, with Bagnaia, Mir and Marquez on the second row. Right from the get-go, the action was frenetic, Bezzecchi dropping to seventh, while Bagnaia led, with Acosta second and Mir, amazingly, third, Martin right behind him.

Then came the controversy. Marc Marquez made a right hash of braking into the sharp left onto the main straight, careered past DiGiannantonio, lost the front end and took both himself and Diggia out. They both remounted but finished way out of the points, while Marquez got a long-lap penalty in Sunday’s GP for his troubles.

But this was yet another Aprilia weekend. Martin and Bezzecchi were running second and third by half distance, but Bagnaia was 1.4 seconds up the road. Then Bezzecchi did his now-common Sprint race trick of throwing it all away, with three laps to go, leaving Martin second to Bagnaia and closing the gap rapidly.

This is where Martin’s masterstroke came into play. He’d opted for the medium rear tyre while everyone else was on the soft. He had to be patient, waiting for the tyre to come to him but, once it did, Bagnaia, suffering with his soft rear, had no defence and Martin swept past on the final lap to take the win, Bagnaia second and Acosta third, although he would have that stripped away for a tyre pressure infringement, promoting Enea Bastianini on the Tech3 KTM onto the podium.

Brilliant stuff, but then we had the bizarre sight of Martin pulling a celebratory wheelie down the straight, only to lose it completely as he put the front wheel down, bike and rider sliding along the tarmac, thankfully with no injury to the rider. A classic race.

And then there was the Main race. As inconsistent as Bezzecchi is in the Sprint races, in the last four GPs, he has led every single lap; that’s a total of 101 consecutive race laps led, the all-time record belonging to Jorge Lorenzo, on 103 from back in 2015. Starting fourth, after a two-place penalty for impeding Marc Marquez in qualifying, gave everyone the impression that that run might well be over. Everyone except Bez himself, that is.

Well before the end of the first lap, he was past Acosta, after a hairy moment between the two coming onto the main straight, Bez losing some rear aero and lucky not to be off. From that point, he was never headed, increasing his winning streak to five races and 121 laps lead. That domination makes it all the stranger that he can’t get it together in the Sprint races.

Even more impressive was the fact that the Aprilia blitzed Acosta’s KTM on top speed, and that’s never happened before! Another factor was the rear tyre. Aprilia looked as if it had made best use of the stiffer-carcassed tyre as used in Thailand and Brazil to combat the heat. The Ducati doesn’t, as a rule, like this tyre and was expected to be back on form in Austin, with the regular construction tyre back in play. Well, that didn’t happen, did it? The two factory Aprilias ran away with the race yet again; the team’s second one-two in a row. Ducati is definitely on the back foot, and Marc Marquez’s slow recovery isn’t helping matters.

Even better than watching Bez and Martin running at the front was watching Ai Ogura’s Trackhouse Aprilia carve through the field, passing easily and looking as if he was on for a podium before the cruellest luck in the form of a mechanical or electronics failure took him out.

The good thing about Ogura is that he has the relative lack of attention and mental freedom to get on with his job and he’s doing an amazing job; he’s quick, always in the points – apart from this race, of course – and the Aprilia, looking like it suits many riders, means Ogura is a lucky fellow; right rider on the right bike at the right time. Just imagine if Aprilia had locked out the podium? Talk about rubbing Ducati’s nose right in it.

Up front, Acosta was powerless to prevent Martin from taking second place after being pressured into a mistake, but the real action was happening a bit further back. Marc Marquez and Enea Bastianini were having a right old ding-dong, the pair of them despatching Bagnaia and swapping places throughout the final laps, the result eventually going to Marquez.

The main thing to take from this, however, is that the KTM is looking rather handy. Well, in the hands of Acosta and Bastianini, that is! Poor Viñales sat out the race, a screw in his shoulder having come loose (yes, really), while Brad Binder could only manage twelfth. You can’t help feeling that he’ll have to do a lot better to justify his place in the team next year, no matter what is going on behind the scenes in the KTM garage. The fact that Acosta is making the RC16 work doesn’t mean that it’s any good, but still, Acosta is making it work, so Binder will be measured against his teammate’s performances.

Talking of next year, as we seem to do a lot in these articles, a surprising bit of news came over the wires in the days following the race. Spanish media reported that current Moto2 riders David Alonso and Dani Holgado will be riding for Honda and Ducati, respectively, next year. As with the Bagnaia/Aprilia, Acosta/Ducati, Quartararo/Honda and Martin/Yamaha rumours, nothing is confirmed or in any way official, but bringing these two youngsters into the MotoGP fold will have ramifications.

Alonso to Honda, alongside Quartararo, means no factory Honda seats for Mir or Marini, who may go to Yamaha, while Mir may go to Trackhouse Aprilia.

Holgado is reportedly off to Gresini, to replace KTM-bound Alex Marquez (allegedly), while Fermin Aldeguer is set to head to the VR46 team. Gresini was linked to a return to Honda machinery but will apparently stick with Ducati, while Bastiannini looks set to return to the team from Tech3 KTM. Oh, and on that note, there is no guarantee that Tech3 will remain with KTM for 2027 and beyond.

Confused yet? You’ve every right to be. But, thanks to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, the Qatar round has been postponed to November, and we’ve got an interminable month to wait for the next race—plenty of time to update your “Who Rides Where In 2027” wall chart.

As always, keep an eye out for all the news as and when it happens.