Through the first few rounds of the 2025 MotoGP season, Raul Fernandez looked a prime candidate for an early contract termination - if not mid-season, then in 2026, the second year of his current Trackhouse Aprilia deal.
Slowly but surely, his campaign had at least achieved some semblance of respectability to where Trackhouse could be fairly confident in dismissing any thought of an early split.
But the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello went further than that for Fernandez, offering a glimpse of a bright MotoGP future that had looked increasingly impossible.
Eleven points does not sound like a lot, but it is Fernandez's joint-best weekend haul in MotoGP, and this weekend felt more representative than Fernandez's attrition-aided score in the 2023 season finale (his other 11-pointer).
Here, there wasn't so much attrition, and it's not like the Aprilia was spectacular. But Fernandez was finally where the bike deserved to be: qualifying a tenth of a second behind current benchmark Marco Bezzecchi on the works version, coming home close behind Bezzecchi in the sprint as they took sixth and eighth, then fighting off a pair of factory KTMs in the main grand prix to secure seventh.
It is, in a vacuum, a par-for-the-course set of results for the Aprilia RS-GP, and Fernandez maybe should've beaten Franco Morbidelli to sixth on Sunday given the VR46 rider's two long laps - a goal Fernandez felt would've been attainable if not for the after-effects of his Friday practice crash.
In any case, 'par for the course' has been largely out of reach for Fernandez this season.
He had started 2025 largely bewildered by the newest Aprilia RS-GP, effectively dominated by rookie team-mate Ai Ogura and incapable of exploiting the bike's inherent cornering ability by leaning on the front - nor managing the tyre temperature.
But he'd believed since the post-race Jerez test after the Spanish GP in late April that this was not fundamental and was in the process of being solved - also because Aprilia's in-season development of the RS-GP was proving agreeable in the process.
"In the French GP I started to feel that we started to be competitive. Maybe this Jerez test saved my life...I think the test saved my life," Fernandez said at Mugello.
"Because it was almost impossible to manage more races like the first five. If we didn't have that test, I don't know what I'd be doing now."
Even earlier in the weekend he was already brimming with confidence in the package underneath him, declaring it as the second-best bike on the grid and insisting it was completely up to him to exploit it now, rather than asking Aprilia for anything more (apart from improving the starts, which is a bit of a never-ending story).
"This race gave me a lot of confidence for the future. With all the upgrades, I am not yet taking 100% of the bike - I am taking 80-85%," he estimated on Sunday - which was an uptick from the estimate of 60% from earlier in the weekend.
"I need a little time. We are working well. Aprilia is working so well. We are on the way. We knew before coming it's a Ducati track, but we put two Aprilia bikes very close to the Ducatis. Aprilia is working so well."
It feels like Fernandez now has the time he needs. Trackhouse made a bit of a splash by inviting Moto2 leader Manu Gonzalez over to test at Aragon, and Gonzalez made a great impression - but both sides insisted in the aftermath it was just a "gift", made possible by Ogura's injury leaving a bike available. Just a reward for Gonzalez for his Moto2 form rather than any kind of 2026 audition.
But it would've absolutely been a 2026 audition - and could still retroactively become one - if the start-of-season Fernandez makes an unwelcome return.
One good grand prix is not enough. Not in year four, not with three prior years of largely disappointing stuff to look back at. Not when team-mate Ogura is still working himself back to full fitness - meaning a real comparison wasn't possible at Mugello.
And yet it's something. Which is more than can be said for what had been going on a couple of months prior, when there was absolutely nothing to latch on to.
A life-saving turnaround? Hyperbolic. (Hopefully!) But a career-saver? Very possibly, but only if - and it's a big if - weekends like these become at least a half-norm.
