Marco Bezzecchi
Alex Marquez has found stability in his MotoGP career. After two team changes in his first four seasons, he’s now looking settled at Gresini.
Marquez started out as the teammate to his older brother Marc at the factory Honda team. But his disappointing performances as a rookie saw him relegated to satellite squad LCR.
In 2023, he swapped manufacturers, jumping on a Ducati bike at Gresini. Now a Grand Prix winner, he’s a prized asset for Nadia Padovani’s team.
That means he can watch the potential MotoGP rider market chaos from afar. With most of the grid not even a quarter of the way through their contract cycle, it looked set to be a fairly sensible ‘silly season’.
But world champion Jorge Martin has reignited the market by triggering a release clause in his Aprilia deal. After just one appearance for his new team, the injury-ravaged rider could be on the move.
Alex Marquez believes that Jorge Martin will stay at Aprilia
Francesco Bagnaia’s future at Ducati has also been cast into doubt as he struggles to keep up with the Marquez brothers. He’s nearly 50 points behind second-place Alex.
Bagnaia has rejected links to Yamaha, insisting that he wants to stay. An all-Marquez line-up at Ducati remains fantastical for now.
Speaking to outlets including Marca at the Grand Prix of Aragon, Marquez Jr reiterated that Bagnaia would hold station. But he also made the bold prediction that Martin would remain with Aprilia in 2026, refusing to buy the talk that he’s joining Honda.
He said: “I think Pecco, and even more so with the statements he made regarding Martin, where he said that contracts are there to be respected, well, I don’t think he wants to take that step now, saying that after one race.
“So, I think everything will stay the same, even the Martin thing, and so many rumours and so many things, in the end, next year’s grid will all be in the same place. That’s my opinion.”
Massimo Rivola has gone too far with his latest Jorge Martin statement
Aprilia are trying to heal the divide with Martin and convince him to stay. In his statement, he confirmed that he’d activated his performance-based exit clause, but added that his departure wasn’t guaranteed.
He’s willing to renegotiate the terms of his deal, effectively giving Aprilia more time to prove their worth when he’s back on the motorcycle. Martin wants to return before the summer break, but it’s touch-and-go.
Based on sporting precedent, it’s difficult to see how the relationship can continue after the superstar rider’s public announcement. But Honda won’t sign Martin unless he makes a clean break from Aprilia, and that could take months to engineer as the Noale outfit dispute the validity of the clause.
In a recent interview, Massimo Rivola claimed Martin could have fought for the title on the RS-GP25. While Marco Bezzecchi won last time out at Silverstone, that seems far-fetched for a team who currently sit 152 points behind Ducati in the constructors’.
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