MotoGP manufacturers’ standings: Aprilia just 8 points behind Ducati

• Ducati leads the manufacturers’ standings with 569 points ahead of Aprilia with 561 points, with two race weekends still to go
• In the teams’ standings, Aprilia Racing is 124 points ahead of the Ducati factory team
• Jorge Martin expects to be almost back to 100 percent at Portimão despite his radius fracture

Four Aprilias in the top seven, the ninth Grand Prix win of the season, and yet a weekend after which Marc Marquez moved even closer to the world title. Qatar showed how mixed the 2026 MotoGP season has been for the manufacturer from Noale. In the riders’ battle, Jorge Martin, the best-placed Aprilia rider, is 60 points behind Marquez. The manufacturers’ standings, on the other hand, are about who has built the better bike. And there the fight is so close that it may only be decided in Valencia.

Where do the MotoGP manufacturers’ standings stand after the Qatar Grand Prix?

Ducati leads the manufacturers’ standings with 569 points, Aprilia follows with 561 points. With Portimão and Valencia, two race weekends remain, each with a Sprint and a Grand Prix.

A simple rule applies to the manufacturers’ standings: in every Sprint and every Grand Prix, only a manufacturer’s best-placed bike counts. Four fast RS-GP26s on the grid therefore do not automatically earn Aprilia more points than Ducati. All that matters is that an Aprilia finishes ahead of the best Ducati, and that every weekend. This season the best Ducati is usually Marquez’s. The next-best Ducati rider in the championship is Fabio Di Giannantonio in sixth place.

In Lusail, Aprilia pulled it off. Marco Bezzecchi won ahead of Marquez, followed by Raul Fernandez, Ai Ogura and, in seventh, Jorge Martin. For Aprilia it was the ninth Grand Prix win of the year, its 17th in the premier class and the 311th world championship win in the brand’s history. Aprilia had never stood on the podium in Lusail before.

For Noale, more than a trophy is at stake. Aprilia has never won a title in MotoGP, neither in the riders’, the teams’ nor the manufacturers’ championship. Ducati is the reigning champion in all three. A manufacturers’ title for Aprilia would also come in the very last season of the current 1000cc bikes, before the new regulations arrive in 2027.

Why does Rivola want to change how the manufacturers’ standings are scored?

Aprilia racing boss Massimo Rivola believes the current rule gives too much weight to a single exceptional rider. Speaking to Sky Italia, he suggested considering a different way of awarding points, because Marquez is almost single-handedly responsible for Ducati’s lead.

Rivola explicitly accepted the statement that four Aprilias are sometimes not enough to beat Marquez. Those are the facts, he said. He nevertheless names the manufacturers’ title as a clear goal and believes it would be deserved.

The teams’ standings are at least as important to him. They add up the points of both riders in a team and, in his view, correspond to the constructors’ championship in Formula 1. There Aprilia Racing is clearly ahead, 124 points clear of the Ducati factory team.

Did Aprilia lose the riders’ title or did Marquez win it?

Rivola clearly sees Marquez as the reason. The Ducati rider made the difference, managed his weekends wisely, took the full 37 points whenever possible and won on the difficult tracks in particular. Rivola does admit, however, that Aprilia itself threw points away. He wants to treat those mistakes as a lesson for the future.

A look at the non-scores shows where the points went. Bezzecchi has won six Grands Prix this season, only one fewer than Marquez. At the same time, he failed to score eleven times. Earlier in the year he had even been 102 points ahead of Marquez. The world champion has six races without points, all before his shoulder surgery in May. Martin, with seven non-scores, was more consistent than Bezzecchi, but has only taken one Sunday win.

How much money does Aprilia race with in MotoGP?

There are no official figures, but Aprilia is considered the factory with the smallest budget among the five MotoGP manufacturers. According to an estimate by GP One, the budget is around 38 million euros (approx. 42.5 million US dollars). KTM is credited there with 45 to 50 million euros (approx. 50.4 to 56 million US dollars). The gap to Ducati and the Japanese manufacturers is said to be even bigger.

On top of that comes a disadvantage with sponsors. Aprilia entered the 2026 season as the only factory team without a title sponsor, alongside its own satellite team Trackhouse. At the presentation of the RS-GP26, Rivola openly admitted that this disappoints him. Fortunately, there is the Piaggio Group, which supports the team. He would love to call Piaggio boss Michele Colaninno one day and tell him he has found an extra ten million for the budget.

The difference is also large at parent-company level. Piaggio may be Europe’s biggest manufacturer of scooters and motorcycles, but it looks small next to the Volkswagen Group behind Ducati and Bajaj Auto as KTM’s new owner. Honda and Yamaha sell millions of motorcycles every year.

How did Aprilia go from backmarker to title contender?

Aprilia owes the turnaround above all to a restructuring under Massimo Rivola, who came to Noale from Formula 1. Before that, the brand’s MotoGP history had long been marked by setbacks.

At the start of the four-stroke era in 2002, Aprilia had no experience with four-stroke engines and had the engine for the RS Cube built by Cosworth. The bike was fast but almost impossible to control. After the takeover by Piaggio, the project was shelved. Only about ten years later did Aprilia return with the RS-GP. Its narrow-angle V4 engine was compact but vibrated heavily. That cost power and unsettled the chassis. Year after year, Aprilia finished last in the manufacturers’ standings.

Instead of pulling out, Piaggio increased its investment and brought in Rivola. He had previously been team manager at Minardi, sporting director at Ferrari and head of the Ferrari Driver Academy. In Noale he brought engineers from Formula 1 into the team, including former Ferrari aerodynamicist Marco de Luca. With him, Aprilia became one of the pioneers in aerodynamics.

One of the most important decisions began with a question from Rivola: why does Aprilia use a V4 with a 72-degree cylinder angle while Ducati and Honda rely on 90 degrees? Engine and electronics experts gathered pros and cons, and in the end the 90-degree engine won out. The new RS-GP ran for the first time at the Sepang tests in early 2020. Two years later, Aleix Espargaró used it to take Aprilia’s first MotoGP win.

Technical development was initially led by Romano Albesiano, who has since moved to Honda; today Fabiano Sterlacchini heads the technical side. Test rider Lorenzo Savadori and the cooperation with Trackhouse also contribute to the bike’s development.

In what shape is Jorge Martin heading to Portimão?

Jorge Martin expects to be almost fully fit for the Portuguese Grand Prix. In Aprilia’s post-race press release he said: “The fracture is improving every day, and I’m sure I’ll be close to 100% at Portimão.”

Just how tight his participation in Qatar was only became really clear afterwards. Martin had broken his right radius in a crash during the Sprint at Phillip Island and missed both races in Malaysia. As late as the Tuesday before the Qatar weekend, he did not actually want to fly and gave himself until Wednesday to decide. In the end he finished third in the Sprint, partly thanks to a last-minute decision to run the soft rear tyre, and seventh in the Grand Prix.

The wrist caused problems above all under braking. Martin did find the right braking point, but he lacked the strength to slow the bike down hard enough. As a result, he kept losing a few hundredths. After twelve or thirteen laps, by his own account, he was mentally close to backing off. When he noticed he was closing in on Enea Bastianini and Pedro Acosta, he gritted his teeth once more. In the last four or five laps, though, there was nothing left. His hand was badly swollen after the race.

Martin stresses that he has comfortably beaten the expected healing time. Until Portimão he plans to continue the same therapies and recharge at home for a few days. The championship is not that important to him at the moment, he says. He wants to ride his last two races for Aprilia at full strength and fight for wins. Mathematically he is still in contention: he is 60 points behind Marquez and 14 ahead of Bezzecchi. To keep the title fight open until Valencia, he has to cut the gap to 36 points at Portimão.

For the manufacturers’ standings, a healthy Martin is another trump card. The more Aprilias fight at the front, the greater the chance that one of them finishes ahead of Marquez. Rivola summed up the weekend in the press release: “This is a recognition for the work at Noale, where they keep refusing to give up.”

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