MotoGP Title Run-In: Martin Leads, but Aragon Plays into Marquez’s Hands

• Jorge Martin leads the championship on 240 points, with Marc Marquez fourth and 40 points adrift
• The remaining programme starts on 28 August with the Aragon GP and ends in Valencia at the end of November
• The Qatar GP is in doubt because of the political situation in the Middle East

The summer break is over and the 2026 MotoGP season is entering its decisive phase. Twelve Grands Prix have been run, ten are still to come, and the top of the standings is as tightly packed as it has rarely been. At the same time, the picture away from the title fight shows very different speeds: while Aprilia set the tone and Ducati respond with ever greater technical effort, Yamaha are fighting to close the gap with a completely new machine.

Where does the 2026 MotoGP championship stand before the Aragon GP?

Jorge Martin leads the riders’ standings on 240 points, ahead of Marco Bezzecchi on 209 and Ai Ogura on 203 points. Marc Marquez is fourth on 200 points, Fabio Di Giannantonio has 199 and Raul Fernandez 184.

That means four of the top six riders are on an Aprilia RS-GP. In the team standings, Aprilia Racing lead with 449 points, ahead of customer squad Trackhouse on 387 and the Ducati Lenovo Team on 343 points. For Ducati that is an unfamiliar position after Marquez took the title last season.

The remaining programme starts with the Grand Prix of Aragon from 28 to 30 August and is condensed into just 13 weeks. Anyone who hits a dip in form here will have little opportunity to make up for it later.

Why is Aragon considered a Marquez track?

Motorland Aragon is one of the circuits where Marc Marquez has been particularly successful over the years. Including last year’s win, he has seven victories there from eleven MotoGP starts.

One reason is the layout: Aragon runs anti-clockwise, and left-handers have traditionally suited Marquez especially well. He was already hard to beat there in his Honda days, and he won both of the races he has contested there on the Desmosedici. In 2024 he also ended a long drought at Motorland, taking a Grand Prix win again after 1,043 days.

For Aprilia, Aragon is therefore likely to be about limiting the damage. There are at least some signs of potential: Bezzecchi qualified only 20th there last year but showed strong race pace, and set the second-fastest time at the Aragon test a day later. Martin finished second on the podium twice there in 2024. Ogura and Di Giannantonio, on the other hand, have yet to prove they can be quick at Aragon.

Where can Aprilia score in the remaining races?

The clearest Aprilia circuit on the remaining calendar is Mandalika in Indonesia. Bezzecchi was well clear of the field there last year, Raul Fernandez took his first podium for Trackhouse in the sprint, and Martin is regarded as a pronounced Mandalika specialist.

For Marquez, by contrast, it is the most difficult track of all. In four attempts he has yet to bring a race home, and he was badly injured in two of his crashes there. Last year’s accident caused the shoulder injury that, by his own account, still troubles him today.

Misano is also among the promising dates for the Italian manufacturer. Bezzecchi was on level terms with Marquez there last year and only narrowly missed a sprint and Grand Prix double. He now has a further developed RS-GP at his disposal, while Marquez is physically no longer quite at his 2025 level.

It will be considerably harder in Austria and Japan. The Red Bull Ring has produced ten Ducati wins in twelve races since 2016, and the stop-and-go character of the circuit suits the Desmosedici. Bezzecchi did at least take pole position there in 2025 and led until half distance before finishing 3.4 seconds down. In Spielberg the Aprilia riders will also be allowed to use again the tyre carcass with which they were strong at the season opener in Buriram and in Goiania. At Motegi and Sepang, by contrast, the RS-GP has rarely been competitive in the past.

Phillip Island promises a close race, not least because it is MotoGP’s final appearance on the island. The circuit runs anti-clockwise, which speaks for Marquez, while at the same time the fast layout appears to suit the RS-GP. Last year an Aprilia rider won there in Raul Fernandez, with Marquez absent through injury.

Qatar, Portimao and Valencia as unfinished business

The Qatar GP is the biggest question mark on the remaining calendar. Because of the political situation in the Middle East, a race at Losail is currently considered hard to imagine. MotoGP has, however, conceded that the race could be held elsewhere, following the example of Formula 1. Finding a replacement circuit that favours neither Aprilia nor Ducati is likely to be all but impossible.

Portimao has only been on the calendar since 2020 and has not yet become a happy hunting ground for any manufacturer. Seven races have produced seven different polesitters, five different Grand Prix winners and four winning constructors. Marquez is still missing a victory there, and the trend over the past two years has leaned towards Aprilia.

Valencia rounds off the season and is the sixth anti-clockwise circuit on the calendar. On paper that speaks for Marquez, but his record puts it into perspective: since 2013 he has taken two pole positions and two wins there, and he did not start at all in 2020, 2021 and 2025. In his absence, Aprilia scored a one-two last year through Bezzecchi and Raul Fernandez. By the end of November at the latest it will be clear whether it is enough for Marquez to take a tenth world title.

What does the title fight mean for Jorge Martin?

For Martin, by his own account, leading the championship is not the main goal but rather a side effect of a long road back. In an interview he described how he himself had not expected to be top of the standings at the start of the season.

The background is a 2025 season in which he appeared at only seven events and finished just four Grands Prix. At the team presentation six months before the Silverstone weekend he was, by his own account, unable to put on his leathers. That makes his assessment all the more striking: “But for me, honestly, the real target is already to be on a MotoGP bike, to be a professional still, and to be alive is already a nice target.”

How much his situation has changed is shown by the comparison with his title year of 2024. Back then he crashed out of the lead at the Sachsenring and went into the summer break twelve points behind Francesco Bagnaia. In 2026, sixth place in the sprint and fifth in the race were enough for him to keep the lead. At Silverstone he then extended his advantage from 14 to 31 points.

Martin used the break for the TransPyrenees cycling marathon, around 1,000 kilometres from Roses to San Sebastian. He describes cycling as a hobby and a training tool, not a second career. He leaves Aprilia for Yamaha at the end of the season but does not want to think about that for now. Of the past few months he says he has learned more from the bad spells than from winning the title.

How does Ducati work with data and simulations?

Ducati rely on extensive simulations in their development work and supplement them selectively with artificial intelligence, without seeing it as a substitute for classic physical models. That was explained by racing boss Luigi “Gigi” Dall’Igna in an interview.

The volume of data is enormous. It ranges from the sensors on the bike to airflow from the wind tunnel and pressures inside the engine, through to tyre temperatures at different points of a race and in individual corners. “Simulations are now a standard part of the development process, and over the past ten years our tools for this have advanced considerably,” Dall’Igna said. At the same time he conceded that in some areas a good deal is still missing, while in others the work can be very precise.

On the question of when AI is used and when a physical model is, the 60-year-old draws a clear distinction. Some areas of the bike can be better understood with AI tools, he said, while in others the physical model has advantages. Allocating the two is therefore also an organisational task.

Support comes from technology company Lenovo, which is also title sponsor of the factory team. According to Dall’Igna, the collaboration serves not only the immediate preparation of the bike but also its further development. One field is aerodynamics, with different fairings and winglets.

The work on tyres is particularly demanding. Over a race weekend, more than 20 engineers at the track and at the factory in Bologna are occupied with that alone. Tyre pressure, which changes over the course of a race, plays a central role. “We put a lot of work into how the tyres are used. For example, into setting the right pressure for the race start so that it is still within the permitted range at the end of the race,” he explained. Dall’Igna summed up the aim behind it briefly: it is about “extracting the maximum” from every available option.

Why does Marc Marquez speak so openly about his brother?

In a Spanish podcast, Marc Marquez describes Alex Marquez as “my brother, my best friend and my best team-mate”. Part of the reason lies in his time out injured, during which his younger brother helped him without realising it, as he tells it.

The two travel, train and race together. The 33-year-old calls last season, in which Marc became world champion and Alex runner-up, “historic” and “almost impossible to repeat”. Of his enforced break he says: “He helped me without knowing it.” Because Alex was out in the paddock, Marc stayed connected to the sport. “I followed the races as if I had been there myself, because Alex was there.”

What is remarkable is how little rivalry is apparent between them. Marc admits that his brother’s wins sometimes give him more pleasure than his own. He celebrated the 2025 Catalan Grand Prix, where Alex won and he finished second, more than his own victory at Aragon. Alex is also said to have expressly recommended the move to Gresini, and with it to Ducati. During their shared title fight, the two continued to exchange information about tyre choice and race strategies.

What visibly does bother him is that Alex is often seen only as his brother, even though he was world champion in Moto3 in 2014 and in Moto2 in 2019. “Maybe I have a little bit more when it comes to talent,” Marc says. “But in terms of work ethic, sacrifice and commitment, Alex perhaps has even more than I do.” Alex could yet play a role in the current title fight: he is a clear favourite at Sepang, a circuit where Aprilia have struggled in the past.

How bad is the season for Yamaha?

After twelve races Yamaha are on 73 points in the constructors’ standings, and their best individual result is a fifth place for Fabio Quartararo at the Catalan GP. The switch to a V4 engine for the 2026 season has not moved the manufacturer forward so far.

Quartararo is 14th in the riders’ standings on 55 points and moves to Honda for next season. His brand colleagues Jack Miller, Alex Rins and Toprak Razgatlioglu occupy 19th, 20th and 21st. Miller and Rins therefore lose their places in the MotoGP field and will move to the Superbike World Championship in 2027.

Quartararo expressly defended the pair. He himself simply has the most experience with the Yamaha, he said, while the V4 machine is completely new for everyone. Rins and Miller have already won races in MotoGP, Rins even with different manufacturers. His conclusion: “They are not rookies, and we know how much we struggle.”

Quartararo does not expect any further technical updates for the rest of the year. Yamaha are concentrating fully on the 850cc project for the 2027 rule change. That is understandable, he said, because the manufacturer knows how far away it is from good results with the current bike. Until the end of the season, all that remains is to extract the best possible from the existing base.

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➜ This article is part of our comprehensive overview: 2026 MotoGP Season: The Complete Overview – Teams, Riders, Calendar & Championship Standings. Find all key information on this topic in one place.