How 2026 has become the best and worst sprint era MotoGP season

The final year of a regulations cycle is meant to provide the most level playing field, with every manufacturer - in theory - converging on performance. That was the case in 2006 in the last year of the 990cc formula, as Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi battled to the final round in a thrilling campaign. 

On the other hand, it wasn’t quite the case in 2011, the final year of the 800cc bikes, as Casey Stoner romped to the title in a year when Honda and Yamaha did all of the winning. 

Right now, the 2026 season and the final year of the current regulations is shaping up to be a much closer affair, more 2006 than 2011. At the halfway stage, 11 rounds in, five riders are currently split by just 24 points. If we extend that out, the top eight are covered by 65 points, very much putting the likes of Pecco Bagnaia and Pedro Acosta one good weekend outside of vaulting into a threatening position. 

It’s also been a first half of… well, two halves, as Aprilia looked unbeatable in the early rounds, before a total form collapse for Marco Bezzecchi gave way to an unexpected Marc Marquez resurgence on the run-up to the summer break. 

Aprilia’s march towards the front of the field was evident as the 2025 season wore on. Consistently, Bezzecchi and the RS-GP grew into a greater threat to Ducati’s dominance, with Aprilia refining its package over the winter as its Italian rival didn’t make the gains expected of it. 

But the realities of fighting for a championship in real-time have, of late, proven to be harsh on Aprilia. 

As of the summer break, Bezzecchi has registered four successive Sunday non-scores, which include a collision triggered by his Aprilia team-mate Jorge Martin in Hungary, a race suspension in Brno for hitting a marshal, and a collarbone fracture from a qualifying crash in Germany. 

Prior to that, Aprilia had to manage an internal rift that developed when Raul Fernandez and Martin came together during the Catalan Grand Prix. 

After the Italian Grand Prix, which Bezzecchi won ahead of Martin, the top eight were covered by 102 points. In eighth spot was Marc Marquez, who’d missed Sunday at the French Grand Prix following a foot fracture, and sat out Barcelona following surgery on that and an ongoing nerve issue in his right shoulder from his Indonesia crash last October. 

At the summer break, Marquez is just 18 points back in third having won in Hungary (when Martin took out Bezzecchi and Fernandez), Czechia (where Bezzecchi was suspended and Martin had a double long lap penalty to serve for his Balaton Park incident) and Germany (where Bezzecchi was absent and Martin was fifth). 

Martin, who won in France, leads the way by 14 points over an impressive, and increasingly imposing, Ai Ogura on the Trackhouse Aprilia. At this stage, the Japanese rider is very much Aprilia’s strongest contender. 

As far as Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola is concerned, only one rider stands out to him as being the true title favourite right now. 

“I think we'll fight until the very last race. We know there's a guy named Marc Marquez there who clearly has the advantage in all the predictions; he's the favourite, but we'll never give up,” he told Sky Sports.

What does the maths say about the current title protagonists?

There have been throwaway comments made by riders and the media alike that nobody seemingly wants to win the 2026 title. That’s something eighth-placed Pecco Bagnaia took some exception to in Germany when asked about it. 

“For me, it's wrong to say that nobody wants to win this championship because they are pushing,” he said. “Everybody is pushing a lot. This year, for the first time, Ducati is not dominant like in the past, like in the last years. And more bikes are competitive like in 2020. So this makes the competition higher. In a race you can gain 20 points. In a race you can gain one point. In a race, you can lose 30. It depends a lot on you and how you feel on your bike.”

If we go back over the last three years since the sprint era was introduced, consistency has counted for even more. Bagnaia won 11 grands prix in 2024, relative to three for Martin, but still came up short by 10 points in the standings because he struggled in sprints. Go back to 2020, the last time a top five was as close as it is now, Joan Mir was crowned world champion with just one grand prix win to his credit. 

Last year, Marquez set a high bar for what a world champion has to do across a campaign, scoring above 30.2 points per round. Martin, by contrast, managed 25.4 per round in 2024, while Bagnaia achieved 23.35 per round in 2023. 

After 11 rounds in 2026, nobody is near to even the lower points-per-round threshold to win the championship that Bagnaia managed three years ago. 

*Marquez’s PPR calculated over 10 rounds where he started at least one race

**Bezzecchi’s PPR calculated over 10 rounds where he started at least one race

Martin has the second-most points per round of anyone at 18.9, but is averaging just seventh across Saturdays and Sundays. Of the top five in the standings, only Ogura is averaging best on Sundays at fifth place across the opening 11 rounds. 

Marquez’s average for the season stands at eighth, though this includes sitting out Sunday in France and the entirety of Barcelona due to injury, as well as DNFs in Thailand because of a puncture and Spain because of a crash. 

Of the 185 points on offer since he returned from surgery in Italy, he’s scored 133, averaging 19 per round for the first 11 rounds.

Martin has scored 81 points in that span, Ogura has 117, Bezzecchi just 13 and Fabio Di Giannantonio 68. If that momentum continues into the first rounds after the summer break, then expect Marquez and Ogura’s average points haul and finishing positions to significantly improve. 

The best sprint season ever?

Despite his struggles of late, Bezzecchi’s strong start to the campaign currently has him on 18.6 points per round, though an average of 11th in the sprints will do him no good in the long run if he can’t improve that. 

In the last three seasons, the average sprint result for the champion was second, fourth and third.

What’s clear from the above is that everyone is underperforming relative to where they need to be to win the championship in the current sprint format. Bezzecchi’s season is a perfect example of this. 

Though he won three grands prix in a row at the start of the campaign, and a fourth in Italy, he hasn’t won a sprint. His best Saturday result was a third at Le Mans. Marquez’s early-season countered this, where his sprint results were solid, but the unpredictability of the nerve issue in his right arm tripped him up on Sundays. 

So, it could be argued that this is the worst season of the sprint format, in terms of results achieved by the leading riders. But, as such, it’s opened the door to the most unpredictable season since this format was introduced.