Last year’s MotoGP world champion Jorge Martin will finally return to the championship this weekend at the final round of the 2025 championship at Valencia, recovered from his latest injury and preparing to start only his eighth race weekend since winning the title 12 months ago.
Coming back to an Aprilia that has once again morphed into something new (and better) in his absence, his return gives us a chance not only to assess where the bike is at now but also what remains possible in the second year of his so far cursed switch from Ducati to MotoGP’s other Italian brand.
First hurt in pre-season testing at Sepang and then injured again more seriously in a training fall as he prepared for his return, it was Qatar’s fourth round of the championship before we even saw Martin start a race on the RS-GP - and that was shortlived as he had a horrific fall in the race at Lusail.
Hit by the following bike of Fabio Di Giannantonio, Martin was left severely injured. Breaking most of his ribs and suffering complications from lung damage, it kept him out of action for a further seven rounds before a surprisingly strong return to action at Brno - with an ultimately-resolved contract battle with Aprilia in the midst of his recovery the last thing that both sides needed.
Consistently inside the top 10 on his return on a bike that had, in his absence, improved dramatically, Martin was closing in on the performances of team-mate Marco Bezzecchi when disaster struck once again in Japan six weeks ago.
Crashing out, taking Bezzechi with him, and breaking his shoulder in the process, it meant four more weekends missed and a return only for this weekend’s final round at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
In the interim, the bike has made another step forwards, too. Now not only a double race winner in the hands of Bezzecchi but also taking its first ever satellite victory thanks to Trackhouse’s Raul Fernandez in Australia, it’s statistically the best ever season for Aprilia in the premier class - even without the reigning world champion.
And, realistically, it's unlikely that he’s going to contribute further to that success at the final round given how absent he has been this year. Valencia isn’t about results for Martin at this stage; instead, it’s a chance to get up to race pace so that next Tuesday’s all-important post-race outing on the new 2026-spec RS-GP goes a little bit more smoothly.
It’s Martin’s only chance to contribute feedback to the new prototype ahead of the Sepang test next February, so it’s no surprise that he’s desperate to check off this race beforehand - and it means that it’s going to be a weekend dedicated to regaining his confidence rather than scoring results.
However, that doesn’t mean that his feedback from Friday morning onwards will be worthless to Aprilia’s engineers. Rather, it’s likely that they’re going to be very keen indeed to hear what he thinks of the changes made to the bike over the past few months, particularly electronically, given the step that Bezzecchi, Fernandez, and Trackhouse rookie Ai Ogura have made since Martin’s latest forced holiday.
And while Fernandez sat out last weekend’s races at Portimao following a punishing crash on Friday morning in which both he and his bike struck the Turn 1 wall, it sounds like he should make a full enough recovery for Aprilia to see its four-rider regular line-up start out together for only the sixth time in 22 races.
The other rider rushing back
Martin won’t be the only rider rushing back into action this weekend in order to rebuild for Tuesday’s test. He’s been joined on the injury bench in recent weekends by Maverick Vinales, following ongoing complications with the shoulder injury the Tech3 KTM rider first sustained in Germany all the way back in July.
Vinales rode on and off since then, starting the weekend in both Austria and Indonesia before pulling out yet completing races (albeit rather pointlessly) at Barcelona, Misano and Motegi. He claims that he’s now closer to full fitness again too after sitting out the past three rounds - and will be hoping for a steady weekend that builds into his first run on KTM’s 2026 bike at the test.
One rider that won’t be present, however, is newly-crowned world champion Marc Marquez, who has confirmed that he will only return at the Sepang test early next year, following the broken shoulder he sustained when Bezzecchi crashed into him at Mandalika, while the status of VR46 Ducati racer Franco Morbidelli remains to be seen.
The victim of opening lap chaos during Sunday’s race at Portimao, he was taken to a local hospital following the crash and, while diagnosed as largely intact, the big head impact he sustained in the fall and Morbidelli’s previous history of traumatic brain injury means that he’s not quite in the clear just yet for Valencia.
