Aprilia warns Jorge Martin to ‘accept suffering’ early in 2026 MotoGP season

Aprilia technical director Fabiano Sterlacchini has warned Jorge Martin that he will need to ‘accept to suffer’ in the early stages of MotoGP 2026 after his injury-hit 2025.

The 2024 world champion has so far competed in just six of the 20 grands prix run so far this year, having been sidelined with four major injuries since the pre-season.

As a result, Jorge Martin has had very little time to adapt to the RS-GP, with his best result on a package that is a proven race winner in Marco Bezzecchi and Raul Fernadez’s hands a fourth in Hungary.

Martin’s season was interrupted again in Japan when he suffered a fractured shoulder in a collision with Bezzecchi in the sprint, with the Spaniard out until the Valencia finale at the earliest.

Jorge Martin needs to “build” performance in 2026

With Martin missing so much time on track in 2025, Fabiano Sterlacchini says he will have to come to terms with the fact he will have to use the early part of 2026 to continue his adaptation to the RS-GP.

“The Jorge Martin situation, clearly, it has been quite a difficult path because we had several stops in the learning process,” he told the official MotoGP website.

“And also, he came back during the season in a way where Marco was really in quite good shape.

“And, for sure, for a super talented rider as Jorge, and also being a world champion, it’s not so easy to accept that you have to fight to recover.

“At the Misano test [before his Czech Grand Prix return], we did a quite interesting job with Jorge on the path of ergonomics, but also finding a bike base because in this sport, with the format we have, it’s super important to be competitive from FP1.

“Then we arrived in Japan. I was in the situation after that, I knew he had a problem in the shoulder, I would have liked to have come back home by swimming from Japan because I was so upset that at the starting point of the path - again - it stopped.

“Now, we are just looking to have Jorge at 100% for 2026.

“He has to stay quite calm and build the performance step-by-step, accepting to suffer in the initial part to have something solid and not something that is coming in just one race for whatever reason.”