MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix: What we learned from Friday practice

Just 12 points is the gap at the top of the MotoGP standings coming into the Japanese Grand Prix. It’s a far cry from the position Marc Marquez found himself in this time just over a year ago, when he stood on the precipice of his greatest championship victory.

He returns to the scene of title number seven as the hunter, with Aprilia’s Jorge Martin firmly in his sights.

And there is a great deal of pressure on his shoulders. Ducati has wilfully admitted that the recent Austrian Grand Prix was a missed opportunity. On a weekend when Marquez could have beaten Martin, a brake issue in the main race meant he was fortunate to finish fifth.

The damage done was not massive. But there is already a sense within Ducati that it’s looking ahead to next weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix with the view that it is going to take a good kicking. Marquez has never had any success at Mandalika, while the stiffer tyre carcass that causes Ducati so many problems returns.

“It’s obvious that here we will try hard to be in front of our opponents, but at the end our target is like every race - to be on the podium,” Davide Tardozzi said today in Japan. “In Indonesia, we will try to do our best. We know that somebody else will be faster than us, but we know that Marc sometimes does something exciting.”

Ducati came into the weekend facing a potential headache, as Michelin expanded its tyre selection to include the hard rear with the stiff casing from Austria on account of Motegi’s asphalt being resurfaced. But, after Friday’s running, it already looks like the hard is just taking up space in Michelin’s awning.

After an hour and 45 minutes of running on Friday, Ducati looks to have an edge over Aprilia at this stage. But Pedro Acosta’s quest for a second MotoGP victory on the KTM has gotten off to a strong start.

The new asphalt at Motegi is proving to be very grippy, with Marquez expecting a difficult qualifying session.

“Tomorrow will be a difficult qualifying because everyone will be very fast,” the Ducati Lenovo Team rider said. “The fact that here it looks like here with the rear tyre you have not only one chance, one lap – two, three laps still the rear tyre is working well. 

“So, this means that everybody will be very fast because the most difficult for the time attack is [when the tyre can only do a] single lap; but here you have more time, or more options, to do the lap time.”

The Ducati, at least, looks to be working well on the soft tyre. Alex Marquez led the way in Practice with a 1m42.811s, a new lap record, with Acosta and Marc Marquez within 0.1s of that time.

Marc Marquez’s long run pace should concern his rivals

Evaluating the pecking order, reigning world champion Marc Marquez highlighted Pedro Acosta as being better than him on race pace at this moment. If we look at the table below, that looks to be the case on paper.

But both riders did their work on different tyres, with Acosta on the soft and Marquez on the medium rear. Marquez did acknowledge that the soft looked to be performing well, so he’ll have to try it on Saturday to assess.

At this stage, Michelin reckons “both the soft and medium rear remain potential options for Sunday’s grand prix. The sprint will provide additional data to confirm their performance and durability over a longer distance.”

The medium was the pick for the main race last year, albeit on a different track surface. Marquez’s average pace was strong at 1m43.928s over a five-lap representative run. But it’s the details where the Ducati rider’s true potential lies.

On a 15-lap-old medium rear, Marquez produced a 1m43.814s. On a 10-lap-old soft rear, Acosta managed a 1m43.589s. That’s pretty impressive from Marquez, though it does place a greater emphasis on qualifying for him to be able to get to the front early in the race and control the pace to maximise his tyre conservation.

Pedro Acosta feels ‘like 2024’ as he chases his second win

Insert some lazy metaphor about London buses right here if it makes you feel better, but there is a fairly legitimate chance that Pedro Acosta could well celebrate his second MotoGP win in as many races having previously waited so long for his first.

That’s not entirely uncommon in MotoGP. It took Jorge Lorenzo 24 races to get his first win as a Ducati rider, before following that up with his second a couple of weeks later at the following round.

Andrea Dovizioso went seven years between his first and second wins in MotoGP, then seven months between wins two and three, and just seven days to his fourth. Sometimes all you have to do is get those floodgates open.

There was always a sense that Acosta, once he got that first win under his belt, would be able to fairly quickly repeat that form. And winning a second in Japan would be something of an act of personal retribution if he can make it happen.

In his rookie season in 2024, he qualified on pole at Motegi and was on course to win the sprint before he crashed late from the lead. He had the pace in the grand prix to be victorious, but fell again.

After his Austria triumph, Marc Marquez commented that Acosta was already favourite to win in Japan. It’s a circuit that suits his hard-braking riding style, much like the Red Bull Ring. And he’s had demonstrable pace around Motegi.

Ominously, he noted after finishing second overall on Friday that he has a “quite similar feeling to 2024 and much better than 2025”. A key issue Acosta faced last year was the KTM’s knack for chewing through its tyres quickly. That hasn’t been so much of a problem in 2026, and looks even less likely on the resurfaced Motegi asphalt to re-emerge.

Certainly, his race pace on the soft rubber positions him as favourite to win the sprint. Qualifying hasn’t necessarily been his strongest suit this season, but he proved in Austria that he can drag enough out of the bike to get it to where he needs to be.

He’s also in a strong position in that he is an outsider in the championship battle. He said on Thursday that his aim is to finish third in the standings. As such, he can put the squeeze on Marquez and Martin a bit more in a racing situation with the knowledge that neither is likely to force the issue given their positions in the championship.

Jorge Martin’s inconsistency may cost him at the worst moment

Championship leader Jorge Martin doesn’t have a great memory from his last visit to Japan, when he wiped out Aprilia team-mate Marco Bezzecchi at the start of the sprint last year and suffered another injury setback.

The fact that he returns to Motegi a year later, leading the championship, is a turnaround that didn’t really seem possible at that point.

And he does so after a strong run of form of late. Arm pump issues aside, his pace at Misano on the Sunday was impressive - and concerning for Ducati - while Austria was arguably he best showing of the season, even if he didn’t win on Sunday.

It felt like a statement moment; in some ways the genuine legitimising of his world championship aspirations in 2026.

But if that was the case, then he’s not put his best foot forward at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix. He was only eighth at the end of Practice, 0.464s off the pace and only just inside a Q2 place.

His long run on the medium tyre was blighted by so many cancelled laps that it’s hard to read into his race pace at this stage. All that can be said for it right now is that it wasn’t very good. Martin complained of the Aprilia’s balance changing between tyres.

It’s not the first time he’s complained of inconsistency. And that has come at stop-and-go tracks before, most recently Aragon. That looked to be an issue he resolved in Austria, but perhaps the stiffer tyre carcass helped in this regard.

His biggest weakness right now is in the third sector, with Martin noting: “But I don't feel super-strong; I feel I'm not riding with flow in that section and I'm losing not only with Marco [Bezzecchi] but with the rest of the riders. 

“So, there are some points where he is faster, some points where I am faster. It's good to have Marco close because we can understand how to be more competitive. I think it will be tough as always, but we are working to improve.”

With a championship lead to preserve and Marc Marquez looking strong already, Martin needs a big reaction on Saturday. Bezzecchi’s form on Friday should help provide a direction, though the Italian - 42 points down in the standings - wasn’t as sharp as Marquez and Acosta on race pace on the soft tyre today.

Only a miracle can help Pecco Bagnaia win in Japan again

Pecco Bagnaia’s pole, sprint, grand prix hat-trick at Motegi last year was truly one of the most baffling moments of the 2025 campaign. It came out of nowhere, as Bagnaia struggled all year to match team-mate Marquez on the same machinery.

And it remains an outlier result for a double world champion who looks even more out of sorts than he did this time last year. He’s now gone a calendar year without another grand prix victory, while his run of consecutive Q1 appearances is up to six now after finishing a distant 16th in Practice today.

Asked how different his GP26 was compared to his GP25 from his race-winning run in Japan last year, he replied, bleakly: “Everything.”

The same issues with rear grip have emerged again, which is even more baffling given the new asphalt is clearly providing a lot of traction; after all, Alex Marquez, on the exact same bike, broke the lap record on Friday. Bagnaia, by contrast, was over 0.6s slower than his pole time from last year in today’s Practice.

It once again raises the question many have been asking for a long time now: just what can Ducati actually do to help him?