With Ducati having won the past 20 Grands Prix – it was last defeated in a Sunday feature nearly a full calendar year ago – MotoGP in 2025 has become a race for second place.
It’s a race that Aprilia – finally – can set its sights on winning.
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This weekend’s fourth round of the season in Qatar will double as Jorge Martin’s long-awaited debut for his new employers after coming across from Ducati as the reigning world champion.
The Spaniard was sidelined from the opening rounds in Thailand, Argentina and Texas after a pair of pre-season crashes left him battered and bruised while fearful for his immediate future, and left Aprilia rudderless as it waited for its leader to recover.
It’s a debut that can’t come soon enough for both rider and manufacturer, but a union that will need time to gel, with Martin massively underdone relative to his rivals, and Aprilia needing to step up to match the ferocious ambition of its high-priced signing once he’s up to speed.
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After a pre-season testing crash in Malaysia that fractured Martin’s right hand and right foot – and a subsequent training spill on a motocross bike that broke his left radius and scaphoid – the 27-year-old will ride this weekend for the first time since his tumbles removed the one rider with the talent, pedigree and belief to stand up to Ducati’s armada of six bikes in the opening phase of the season.
What shape is Martin in for his return? How much have Aprilia missed him? And what’s the end game – for rider and factory – for the rest of 2025, with Ducati dominating both the riders’ and constructors’ championships for a fourth straight season?
A TIMELINE OF TURMOIL
When Martin rolled out of the Sepang pit lane with the number 1 reserved for the world champion on the front of his Aprilia RS-GP machine on February 5, expectations were high.
The Spaniard, who signed midway through 2024 after his seemingly inevitable promotion to the factory Ducati team was scuppered by a Marc Marquez political masterclass, battled Francesco Bagnaia all the way to the chequered flag in Barcelona in November to steal the title by 10 points, and – with it – Ducati’s marketing thunder for the next 12 months, Martin’s smiling face and number 1 plate prominent online and with Aprilia’s suite of sponsors as the pre-season roared into life in Malaysia.
A violent highside at turn two just before midday on day one of testing stopped the feel-good vibes cold, but Martin was expected to be ready – compromised, but ready – for when the season started in Thailand at the end of the month. But while training to recover from his injuries, Martin crashed a supermoto bike in Andorra on February 24 and broke his left wrist, immediately flying to Barcelona for surgery.
It was the last time Martin has ridden anything other than a pushbike before this weekend’s return in Qatar, as he explained when attending a Grand Prix for the first time this season in Austin a fortnight ago.
PIT TALK PODCAST: In the latest episode of Pit Talk, hosts Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton review a wild Americas GP that saw Francesco Bagnaia win for the first time in 2025, Marc Marquez controversially triggering an aborted start, and Jack Miller’s strong ride to fifth at COTA.
“I high-sided really, really fast,” he said of his motocross crash.
“I was exiting from one corner in fourth gear – it’s not a MotoGP [bike] but it’s a supermoto that’s already performing [at a high level] – and it was already straight when I touched a kerb. It was a really, really big crash … I broke again my foot, four bones in the foot, and the three new bones in the hand. It was a bad one, really bad one.”
While his spill at Sepang was, as he put it, “strange”, the recovery was straightforward. The second crash tested his resolve and was difficult to accept, he admitted.
“The first injury [during testing] was for sure a strange crash, I broke three bones, but after 7-8 days I was again on the bike, so on the mental side [it] was nothing,” he said.
“But that [second] one was really heavy, I was scared because I felt my hand as never before, [I] was in a bad situation.
“Normally after the surgery you start to move a little bit or you start to feel, but I didn’t. For two weeks I couldn’t move the left hand … the mental side was difficult. I was scared to maybe not ride – or something – again, because it was really in a bad situation.
“I’m still struggling a lot, not to move but I cannot put any weight [on the hand]. It wasn’t just the scaphoid but also the head of the radius that was broken in three pieces. I don’t know which was worse, but both are really important to put weight on the hand.
“I think it’s one of the worst injuries for a rider, to have both of those two bones [broken]. But after two, three weeks I started to see the light, and I know in the long term it won’t be a problem. But now, for sure I don’t feel at my best, so let’s see when I ride how it is.”
The 16-turn clockwise Lusail International Circuit in Qatar – where Martin first marked himself out as a star of the future when he took pole for just his second MotoGP race in 2021 – has six left-hand corners that will test the strength of that recovering left wrist, with the long run through turns 10-11 and the high-speed flick at turn 15, the penultimate corner, likely to cause the most discomfort this weekend.
WHY APRILIA HAS MISSED ITS STAR SIGNING
Proof of Martin’s value to Aprilia before he’s even turned a wheel for them on a race weekend? The first three rounds of the season, where the brand’s four riders have had only a few bright spots.
Japanese rookie Ai Ogura is one of the non-Ducati standouts of the season to date; riding for Trackhouse Aprilia, the reigning Moto2 champion was outstanding in Thailand to start the year, harrying Bagnaia all the way for the final place on the podium in his maiden sprint start.
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Sixth in the standings, Ogura has outshone vastly more experienced stablemate Marco Bezzecchi (eighth), Martin’s teammate at Aprilia’s factory outfit who had a promising pre-season in the world champion’s absence after coming across from Ducati, but has been mostly underwhelming since.
Ogura has shown up Spanish teammate Raul Fernandez (18th), the 2021 Moto2 runner-up to Australia’s Remy Gardner who is still yet to deliver on that promise in the top flight, while Aprilia test rider Lorenzo Savadori (22nd) has managed a single point in three rounds deputising for Martin.
In the constructors’ championship, Aprilia sits fourth out of five manufacturers in a crowded race to be a distant second to Ducati (111 points); Honda (36) and KTM (34) have outscored Aprilia (33), with Yamaha at the back on 28 points.
Ducati riders have taken all three poles, all six wins and all 18 podium places this season; in Argentina, Ducati riders finished in the top five positions in the Grand Prix, while in Texas, Marc Marquez crashing from the lead meant Yamaha’s Jack Miller was ‘best in class’ by finishing fifth, Yamaha’s best result since late 2023.
While the first three venues of the 2025 championship – Thailand, Argentina and Austin – make year-on-year comparisons to last year’s first trio of races (Qatar, Portugal, Austin) largely irrelevant, Aprilia’s deficit to the front hasn’t made for pleasant reading despite Ogura being the first non-Ducati across the line in the Thailand sprint and Grand Prix.
Aprilia race-by race, 2025
Round 1: Thailand
Fastest Aprilia in qualifying: Ogura (5th), 0.352secs from pole (M. Marquez, Ducati)
Best Aprilia in sprint: Ogura (4th), 4.392secs behind winner (M. Marquez)
Best Aprilia in Grand Prix: Ogura (5th), 7.450secs behind winner (M. Marquez)
Round 2: Argentina
Fastest Aprilia in qualifying: Bezzecchi (9th), 0.497secs from pole (M. Marquez)
Best Aprilia in sprint: Bezzecchi (6th), 7.333secs behind winner (M. Marquez)
Best Aprilia in Grand Prix*: Fernandez (15th), 26.914secs behind winner (M. Marquez)
* Ogura finished 8th, 14.447secs behind Marquez, but was disqualified for his bike being fitted with a non-homologated ECU.
Round 3: Americas
Fastest Aprilia in qualifying: Bezzecchi (13th), 1.007secs from pole (M. Marquez)
Best Aprilia in sprint: Ogura (9th), 13.752secs behind winner (M. Marquez)
Best Aprilia in Grand Prix: Bezzecchi (6th), 12.238secs behind winner (Bagnaia, Ducati)
Aprilia’s RS-GP has been beset by some unusual problems this year; with a history of its performance waning in hot, tropical conditions in previous seasons, the bikes of Bezzecchi and Ogura played up in Austin in a rain-hit, cold Friday practice session, both bikes limping back to the pits in fail-safe mode after getting too cool.
Despite that, and the relatively uninspiring results so far, Martin’s return lifts their ceiling instantly, even if he’s some way from being fully fit. The status of their non-Ducati rivals only illustrates why.
Miller, three races into his second stint with Pramac Racing, has been Yamaha’s surprise shining light.
Honda is on the improve – Johann Zarco qualified on the front row in Argentina – but is coming from a long way back.
KTM – on the podium in Qatar with Brad Binder a year ago – have been the biggest disappointment of the season, and are dealing with weekly headlines that star youngster Pedro Acosta may be looking to pastures new.
Having never finished better than third in the constructors’ title chase, second should be Aprilia’s to lose once Martin gets settled.
It’s not the high of winning a world title for the Spaniard, but that – given his immediate goals will be to get through Qatar and the following round in Spain unscathed and be ready to capitalise on the in-season test at Jerez that immediately follows – might be as good as 2025 gets, and could set the tone for the final year of the current regulation set next season before the switch to 850cc machinery for 2027.
For now, Martin’s goals are to get back, and stay back. And – against the trademark impulsive instincts that led him to sign with Aprilia in the first place – stay patient.
“I don’t know how my condition will be, for sure I won’t be at 100 per cent,” he said of Qatar.
“In my condition, I have to be realistic.
“With 5000-6000km less [than his opponents], coming from an injury and with a new bike – a completely new bike because I only did 10 laps in Sepang – I need to be realistic and focus on myself. This is what I will do.”