Misano exposed the one Aprilia MotoGP weakness it can do nothing about

There does come a certain point where superlatives fail when attributed to Marc Marquez. After May’s Italian Grand Prix, a weekend that arguably represented the true scale of the problems Ducati faced in its battle with Aprilia, the seven-time world champion was 102 points adrift of the championship lead.

When he returned from surgery to rectify a long-standing nerve issue that was a consequence of his Indonesian Grand Prix crash last October, he’d all but written himself out of title contention.

Since then, however, he’s won five grands prix, four of those coming on 37-point weekends, and has entirely eroded a 102-point deficit to stand level with Jorge Martin on 274 points at the summit of the championship standings. By virtue of his better results, Marquez officially sits number one in the table.

Of the 259 points up for grabs in the seven races following the Italian Grand Prix, Marquez has scored 203. Martin has amassed 118, while Marco Bezzecchi has taken just 68 in that same span.  And that’s come as Aprilia has held a clear bike advantage over Ducati, not to mention perhaps the most crucial factor that cannot be ignored: Marquez’s right shoulder, according to his surgeon, is operating at just 50% of its full capacity.

While the picture might look familiar after the San Marino Grand Prix, that is not the same Marc Marquez that won the title last year sitting atop the standings right now.

Marquez's injury situation will help deflect pressure in title battle

That was evident in the viral social media post he made after the Aragon Grand Prix, showing the damage done to his right bicep area over the years: “What happened after Aragon,” he said at Misano, “helps me to just concentrate and to be relaxed, and to be open to everybody that I will try to [give my best] with what I have, and that’s what I’m doing. This gives me the feeling I believe I need to fight for the championship.”

Marquez says his revealing social media post has set him “free”. It’s also provided him with two important weapons in this title fight. By showing just how different his physical situation is this season compared to 2025, it puts his strong results into a completely different context - and one that only piles the pressure on his rivals.

And, ultimately, if he doesn’t win this championship, there is a very clear reason why, one that has absolutely nothing to do with his speed, nor Ducati’s, and - in many ways - nothing to do with how good a job their rivals can do.

For Aprilia, that’s a hard battle to face. The engineering department at Noale has done a fantastic job to get the RS-GP into the position of being the grid’s best bike right now. The fact it finds itself in such a tight championship battle is largely nothing to do with the manufacturer itself.

Bezzecchi’s run of four successive Sunday non-scores before the summer break massively derailed his title chances. Martin has had his ups and downs, with his Misano race ruined by an unexpected arm pump issue; without that, he had the pace to win. Now, however, he may need to have surgery after Austria, with such a busy race schedule upcoming. And the injury that has kept Ai Ogura sidelined since before the Aragon Grand Prix has served to wipe a probable title contender for the brand off the board.

But that’s racing. Had Marquez been in the form he is now at the start of the season and not been plagued by that troublesome nerve issue, it’s not unlikely he’d already have taken the lead in the championship at some point before Misano.

Ifs and buts don’t win championships, though. Aprilia is beginning to learn this the hard way, as Bezzecchi squandered a golden opportunity at Misano to edge himself closer to the championship lead he lost in the run-up to the summer break.

While the Misano layout had sections that played into the Ducati’s hands, the Aprilia was clearly the faster bike. Bezzecchi’s sub-1m30s pole lap record was a masterclass in just how potent he and the RS-GP can be when on song. Martin couldn’t get near that qualifying effort on soft rubber throughout the weekend, while Raul Fernandez on the sole Trackhouse bike looked like he was in a different race.

Such was Bezzecchi and Aprilia’s form in qualifying that Marquez revealed to DAZN that he broke Ducati’s lean angle record at 65 degrees pushing for a pole position he ultimately lost out on by almost 0.2s.

But Marquez had the measure of him in the sprint, once again grabbing the advantage on the brakes into Turn 1 just as he did at Aragon. Still, second marked Bezzecchi’s best sprint result of the season. And it looked likely, as he tends to do, that he would make a step for the grand prix.

Indeed, he converted pole to the holeshot and looked like he would quickly break away on the opening lap before he crashed - heartbreakingly - in front of his own grandstand at Turn 13. Bezzecchi later explained that he got a bit out of shape on the way through the fast right-hand sequence of corners before Turn 13 and was slightly off-line when he touched the brakes.

Bezzecchi's crash from the lead at Misano becoming a too familiar issue

For the fifth time in seven rounds, he failed to score on a Sunday. Marquez, for the fifth time in seven rounds, registered the maximum 25 points in his column. The world feed pictures did all the talking for what Bezzecchi was thinking at that moment.

Starting Sunday 22 points from the championship lead, he ended it 33 adrift of Marquez and Aprilia team-mate Martin. That’s not a disaster, by any stretch, with at least seven rounds remaining (assuming, as is likely, that Qatar is cancelled due to the war in Iran). That is a recoverable points situation. But it’s not clear yet if it’s a mentally recoverable situation for Bezzecchi.

The Brno incident revealed just what the pressure of a title battle with Marquez can do to a rider. Then there was the Dutch Grand Prix crash, which was fairly similar to Misano, as it came while Bezzecchi had a clear pace advantage over the Ducati rider. He looked to be bouncing back after strong podiums while injured at Silverstone and Aragon, as well as most of his Misano weekend.

But how he responds to his crash last Sunday will almost certainly come to define his championship campaign.

“The season is still very long, my target remains the same, which is to try to be back at my beginning of the season shape,” Bezzecchi told the official MotoGP website after the race. 

“And then from that moment, we will see what we can achieve. Marc is doing his job in a proper way, Jorge has been amazing since the beginning. Unfortunately, I am a little bit far [back] now, but it’s not over yet. Many points still to play with and we will try our best. But at the moment, I look a little bit more to myself. I try to improve many things and there are many things I need to work on.”

Aprilia goes to Austria now, licking its wounds. In theory, it should be able to pick up from where it left off. The RS-GP is still a strong package and worked well early in the season on the stiffer rear tyre carcass that Michelin will bring to the Red Bull Ring. Ducati struggled more on that tyre in the first two rounds, albeit with Marquez struggling more with his fitness at that stage.

There will be rounds coming up where Ducati and Marquez will have to simply survive while Aprilia stretches its legs. But the momentum in this title battle has shifted into a completely new phase now after Misano.

Aprilia’s bike advantage remains. But neither Bezzecchi nor Martin have faced the pressure of fighting for a MotoGP title against Marquez. And that is a weakness no amount of engineering work can counter…