Why Marc Marquez’s lacklustre Assen round was his biggest win of MotoGP 2026

For once, Marc Marquez’s estimations of his finishing potential were accurate. Across the Dutch Grand Prix, he expected to finish around the seventh-place mark, with maybe a top five if everything went his way.

The reigning world champion has offered a cautious outlook for every round so far this season, but even more so since returning from surgery on his right shoulder. And yet, in that four-round span, he’s won two grands prix and a sprint, as well as taking pole in Hungary. So, believing anything he says has become something of a test.

But even as the champagne was still drying on his Ducati leathers after winning the Czech Grand Prix, he noted that the Assen weekend would be about “survival”. Though he won at Assen last year, the fast right-handed layout has always been a test for him when he was fully fit, let alone while he’s still trying to find the new 100% in his shoulder.

“I’m in safe mode,” he said after finishing seventh, where he qualified, in the sprint last Saturday. “In this circuit, you need to feel [confident], and I don’t feel that I can push much more. I’m riding not bad, but I’m losing too much in some points.”

In particular, he was struggling with the changes of direction from left to right, especially those that led onto a hard braking zone, such as the final chicane. In the grand prix, he was on the receiving end of a number of overtakes there - including a 2015-esque one from Fabio Di Giannantonio that saw Marquez playing the Valentino Rossi role as he skittered through the gravel.

“I’m struggling a lot from left corners to right ones,” he explained after finishing sixth on the road in the main race, though this was converted to seventh due to a penalty for exceeding track limits on the final lap. “Especially if I need to change from left and arrive in a brake point on the right side. That is where I’m struggling more, and today it’s where people attacked me.”

Marquez’s risk-over-reward ratio was uncharacteristically weighted towards safety across the Assen round. The Dutch venue bites hard when it does, as the likes of Alex Marquez, Fermin Aldeguer - who fractured his back - and Marco Bezzecchi found out throughout the weekend.

He really was out to survive, noting after the race: “I went out on the race and I knew that my place was finish sixth, seventh, eighth. And it's true that looking at the race, the maximum was fifth place, but in the end we finished seventh. The good thing is that we escaped from Holland without injuries, so this was my main target.”

That didn’t necessarily stop him from getting his elbows out a bit. He made a late choice to go to the soft rear for the grand prix, which put him in a podium position in the early stages. He also didn’t exactly roll over in battles with the likes of Bezzecchi and KTM’s Pedro Acosta.

Finishing 10.288s from the race-winning Aprilia of Ai Ogura on a weekend in which the Noale brand ran riot, the results sheets won’t work their way into any frames to be hung with Marquez’s other achievements. But the big win comes when looking at the championship standings.

Sitting 102 points from the lead after his Italian Grand Prix comeback (where he was also seventh), Marquez came to the Dutch Grand Prix 40 points adrift. After coming away from it with a brace of sevenths, his deficit to points leader Jorge Martin remains at just 40.

“I feel like I'm not the strongest one, and I'm not the fastest one, but nobody wants to be the fastest one,” he said. “So at the moment, it's five names in the championship that are fighting every race there.”

Marco Bezzecchi’s title-favourite status has collapsed

Marquez maintaining the championship deficit he came to Assen with is a major victory for his own title aspirations, not least with the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring coming up ahead of the summer break.

There is a real possibility of Marquez registering another 37-point weekend in Germany, which would thrust him right into the thick of the championship battle, depending on how those ahead of him in the standings go.

The situation Marquez finds himself in has been helped in no small part by Marco Bezzecchi’s recent form implosion. The Aprilia rider was an unfortunate victim in a Turn 1 pile-up triggered by his team-mate Jorge Martin in Hungary. But his crash out of a top five in the Brno sprint was all his own doing, as were the actions immediately afterwards that got him a ban for the grand prix in Czechia.

What he needed at Assen was a proper rebound. But his sprint struggles continued, with Bezzecchi fourth as the Trackhouse Aprilia duo stormed to a 1-2. But Bezzecchi was unquestionably the favourite for success in the grand prix, based on Friday's practice long run pace.

But on the second lap of 26, he crashed going through the fast left-hander at Turn 15 while running in fourth. It was a heavy fall that required him to go to the hospital for checks, which thankfully revealed no serious injuries.

He lost the lead in the championship to team-mate Martin, who is not yet fully adapted to the RS-GP, dropping seven points behind him. Such has been the wild nature of the 2026 season so far that 63 points cover the top eight down to Pecco Bagnaia with half the campaign still to run.

Bezzecchi wasn’t able to give his version of events due to his trip to the hospital, but Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola felt it was simply a mistake on the Italian’s part: “Simply too fast. It’s a shame about Marco’s mistake. On a weekend where he had shown such great speed, he should have achieved much more. However, the priority now is to recover as best he can after the bad crash.”

From a possible 111 points in the month of June, Bezzecchi has taken just 11. And that has come at a time when the pressure is clearly beginning to get to him. His Brno outburst with a marshal was a sign of the first crack. I wrote at the time that it had opened up an opportunity for Marquez to begin to exploit.

Indeed, Marquez made a point on Friday and Saturday to put the spotlight on Bezzecchi’s form, stating that he was expecting a 37-point weekend from the Aprilia rider. And even after he was only fourth in the sprint, Marquez said on Saturday “I expect tomorrow that Marco will be the fastest again”.

Bezzecchi found himself behind Marquez on the second lap while running fourth in the main race. He crashed going through the strongest sector for the Aprilia, and arguably the weakest for Marquez in the grand prix. Rivola’s claim that Bezzecchi was “simply too fast” makes it hard to look past the crash as anything but the former championship leader being a little too desperate to overtake a rider growing in threat.

With Marquez on the soft tyre - something Bezzecchi may not have been aware of at the time - it was ultimately needless to pass the Ducati rider quickly, because he would have faded eventually. That’s a fact that will gnaw in hindsight.

The upcoming German Grand Prix has now become an immensely important round for Bezzecchi. But the consistency of his team-mate Martin (who won his 2024 title by just stacking strong points finish after strong points finish against an erratic Bagnaia) while not yet fully adapted to the Aprilia, the similarly consistent Fabio Di Giannantonio, the undeniable rise of Dutch Grand Prix winner Ai Ogura, and Marquez looming has raised an uncomfortable truth: at this moment, Bezzecchi is no longer title favourite.

Ai Ogura’s victory a long time coming

Not since 2004 had a Japanese rider won a MotoGP race before last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix. Makoto Tamada’s Motegi victory ushered in a drought for Japanese MotoGP fans that would last 7952 days, until Ai Ogura beat Trackhouse team-mate Raul Fernandez by 2.004s at Assen.

It completed a perfect weekend for the Trackhouse squad in its third season in MotoGP, having also celebrated a 1-2 in the sprint. Across both races, it was simply the better Aprilia team.

Ogura, once seemingly destined for a Honda seat, was something of a shock signing by Trackhouse in the middle of the 2024 season. When he won the Moto2 title that year, it was a contract that had aged spectacularly well.

But Davide Brivio, soon to leave Trackhouse for Honda in 2027, has always had an eye for young talent: “His riding style seems to be probably a good starting point to be a MotoGP riding style,” Brivio told Crash in the winter of 2024.

“To see Ai riding the bike is quite strange, because the style he is using is quite different to the rest of us,” team-mate Raul Fernandez commented last Sunday. “Maybe for that reason he is strong at the end of the race. In data, we see that his performance comes better and better. So, be careful with him in the championship.”

Ogura’s late-race pace has been something to marvel at this year. But he’s now marrying that with better qualifying form, which is stopping him from having to work so hard to close in on the podium battle.

On lap four, he found himself 2.4s off the lead in fourth. Once through into third, he carved into the advantage held by Jorge Martin on the factory team RS-GP and Fernandez. Even a late ride height device issue, which he said was his own mistake, couldn’t knock him off his stride.

Arguably, this first win should have come in March at the US Grand Prix, but for a technical issue knocking him out of the race. It’s to Ogura’s immense credit - as well as the surroundings of the Trackhouse squad - that this didn’t cripple his confidence. He came close again two weeks ago at Brno, but just lost out to Marc Marquez.

Now just 25 points from the championship lead, he is well and truly in the title hunt and carrying a lot of momentum into the final round before the summer break.

“I’ll keep doing my job in the next races,” he said, in his typically honest way. “And if it’s enough, I can be happy. But if they do something better, they are just better.”