It's clear who the 2026 MotoGP title favourite is now

It’s almost something of a cruel joke that ever since Marc Marquez won his first grand prix of the 2026 MotoGP season, everything has gone wrong for Marco Bezzecchi. At the start of the campaign, the opposite was true.

Marco Bezzecchi, admittedly held back by a poor sprint hit rate, could seemingly do no wrong on Sundays after the first three rounds. A bad weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix and the French Grand Prix resulted in a second-place finish.

The Italian Grand Prix seemed to legitimately mark a new phase of the 2026 campaign when Aprilia romped to a 1-2 on Ducati’s home turf, with Bezzecchi in total control. It was hard to see then how he didn’t continue that run and strengthen his championship lead heading into the summer break.

At the same time, Marquez had a couple of sprint wins to his credit but no Sunday podiums. On top of that, there was a hell of a lot of doubt swirling over his head about his physical condition. The crash on Saturday at the French Grand Prix, which left him with a broken foot, was in some ways a blessing. It got the truth about his nerve issues in his right arm out there and prompted him to move up his operation.

Even then, his return at Mugello was a weekend of survival, and one that he concluded 102 points behind Bezzecchi. As he has repeated several times since, he was completely out of the game at that point.

After the German Grand Prix, Marquez is now just 18 points from the championship lead in third, while Bezzecchi has fallen behind him to fourth. While the Sachsenring race may not have done much to back this up, MotoGP in 2026 has been more unpredictable than we have seen in years.

Certainly, predicting Bezzecchi's last four rounds would have been considered cruel: a DNF in Hungary after being taken out by your team-mate, a crash in the Brno sprint and an exclusion from the grand prix after striking a marshal, a heavy crash out of the Dutch Grand Prix, followed by a collarbone fracture in a Q2 crash in Germany.

From winning five grands prix in a row between Portugal last year and this season’s US round, he’s scored just 13 points between Hungary and Germany. In the same span, Marquez has scored 119 points. After Mugello, Bezzecchi had totalled 173, while Marquez had just 71.

“I don’t understand anything. I said already in the last race,” Marquez commented after the German GP.  “But we are trying to attack where I feel OK and trying to survive when we have difficult tracks. It’s true that if we want to fight for the championship, I need to improve some points - the right arm. It’s the only point I need to improve.

“So, this summer break, I will take a rest of course, because on the mental side I need it. But I need to work very hard on the right arm, especially on the weak points, because there are some points where I’m just riding the bike; I’m on the bike, but I cannot play with my body. So, it’s there where I want to work.”

2026 becoming championship battle of survival 

Pole and a brace of wins at the Sachsenring is hardly a revolutionary result for Marquez. That was his 10th German Grand Prix victory in the premier class and 13th across all categories. When fully fit, he was untouchable. Still struggling with his right shoulder he injured last October, it’s one of the few circuits that takes the strain off that side of his body.

He insists there was no limitation from a physical standpoint this weekend. But even then, losing would have been no disgrace given his fitness condition relative to those around him. That he was able to win, and do so convincingly, while once again his nearest rivals faltered, just acts as another small twist of the knife.

Bezzecchi’s implosion has been a great boost to Marquez’s championship hopes. Some of that has come through misfortune, such as the Hungary DNF and his collarbone injury in Germany. But his crash at the Brno sprint, and subsequent marshal incident, as well as his Assen fall, were entirely his own errors. And they came as Marquez piled more pressure on the title battle.

So, in a lot of ways, Bezzecchi’s form dip isn’t entirely coincidental.

But in what remains a tight championship picture right now, with 65 points covering the top eight, none of the expected combatants have exactly shone brightly. Pecco Bagnaia’s third in Hungary, sprint win and third at Brno gave way to mediocre showings at Assen and Sachsenring. Pedro Acosta’s victory challenge in Hungary has been the only time in the last four rounds a podium has looked realistic for the KTM rider, who is going above and beyond on that RC16.

Bezzecchi’s issues are well-documented, while Aprilia team-mate Jorge Martin has hardly stepped up to take his place as the brand’s number one.

Prior to his difficult Barcelona weekend, the 2024 world champion was threatening to cause Bezzecchi some serious problems. But since then, it just hasn’t worked out that way. A brace of podiums at Mugello aside, Martin was nowhere near a podium challenge at Brno courtesy of a double long lap penalty, while at Assen he was easily beaten by the Trackhouse duo.

Martin, who’s battled persistent front-end issues for a while now, believes he’s moved too far away from the set-up that worked for him earlier in the season. Indeed, at the Sachsenring, he binned off all of the work he did across Friday to take on the same set-up as the Trackhouse duo for the races.

“I think now we are quite far away from the bike we used in the first part of the season in Austin, in Brazil, in Le Mans,” he said. “I see that the other riders are more stable with their bikes. They know what they have, and they just go. From my side of the box, we are always trying to adapt the bike to the different track to try to help me, but maybe this is not the way for the Aprilia, so we need to understand this.”

Operationally and results-wise, Trackhouse has had the measure of its factory Aprilia counterpart in recent weeks. That was the case again in Germany, with Ai Ogura second in the grand prix from Raul Fernandez. Martin’s average pace worked out at 1m22.104s relative to 1m21.804s for leading Aprilia rider Ogura.

Fernandez all but ruled himself out as a genuine title contender on Sunday, believing he still has more to learn first, despite being within range at 49 points back. But, at present, it’s hard to look beyond Ogura as Aprilia’s strongest rider - even with Martin holding a 14-point lead over the Japanese star in second.

VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio could have left Germany leading the championship, marking the first time this year a Ducati rider would have done so. Instead, he registered his first Sunday non-score of the campaign with a crash while running fifth at the Sachsenring.

It’s a fall that confused him, as - he explained - the data showed he did absolutely nothing different at Turn 10 compared to the previous lap. While he didn’t think so, it’s hard to look past the correlation between him running Ducati’s 2026 aero for the first time on Sunday and the brace of crashes he suffered in warm-up and the race. Whether that was the true cause or not, it was an eyebrow-raising decision to test something as radical as a new aero package on a Sunday.

What’s becoming clear about the 2026 title battle is that no one rider has so far shown they can sustain any kind of consistent dominance. Bezzecchi managed three grands prix wins in succession, which hasn’t been matched so far. But those also came in the opening three rounds of the campaign. And so far, he’s failed to win any sprints.

Marquez is now the only other rider to have won three or more Sunday races in 2026 as well as four sprints. Only he and Martin have been able to score a sprint win and a grand prix victory in a single weekend.

As for grand prix wins, Alex Marquez, Ai Ogura, Martin and Di Giannantonio have one apiece. The form of Ducati and Aprilia now appears to have converged, with neither one outright dominant. Assen, for example, was a weekend where Aprilia shone. Sachsenring saw Ducati step forward, with crashes for Di Giannantonio and Alex Marquez giving Aprilia a free pass to a couple of podium finishes.

“We've always been competitive,” Ducati’s Davide Tardozzi told Sky Italy in Germany. “There were some unfortunate episodes at the start of the season, as were our rivals. I think the bikes are equally competitive, and I think it will continue that way until the end of the season. On some tracks, like Silverstone for sure, Aprilia will be a bit of a favourite; on others, we might be the favourites, but it's the riders who make the difference right now.’”

Marquez pressure is new to Aprilia

In that respect, the rider making the biggest difference is Marc Marquez. Tactically, this is a different championship battle than any he has faced before. Until he gets his right shoulder back up to whatever his new 100% is, he’s having to maximise the weekends where he knows he will be competitive and survive the weak ones.

He came into the Assen round 40 points from the championship lead and left it in the same position. That protected the work he did in Hungary and Brno to win, and allowed him to get to Germany - his stomping ground - unscathed to get back to winning ways.

When the tables turned in Ducati’s favour, Marquez made it count. That wasn’t the case for Bezzecchi or Martin when the pendulum swung towards Aprilia.

Without knowing the physical shape Marquez will be in coming out of the summer break, nor whether or not Bezzecchi will be present, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone looks like it will be a survival round for the reigning champion. Not his strongest track at the best of times, it’s fast, clockwise layout will prove to be difficult for him.

In theory, Aprilia should clean up at Silverstone. But with just an 18-point deficit to play with, Marquez is now exerting pressure Aprilia hasn’t yet faced this season…