As MotoGP’s 2025 season resumes, reigning world champion Jorge Martin’s can actually start - after the extraordinarily and painfully bad first eight months of his relationship with Aprilia.
From the testing crash to the training crash to the awful crash on his (first) comeback weekend, and then the shock attempt to leave Aprilia before he’d really raced for it only to back down and commit to seeing out his two-year contract, Martin’s 2025 has been physically and mentally punishing - some of it very much self-inflicted.
But when he finally did properly race an Aprilia at Brno just before the break, a very promising seventh place despite all that missed mileage seemed a hint that maybe - incredibly - this might all turn out fine after all.
So as Martin heads to the Red Bull Ring - scene of his first MotoGP victory in 2021 - having had another month of recovery time, what should we expect from the rest of his time at Aprilia? Will he win races in 2025? Might this even turn into a long-term deal? Or has too much damage been done?
Here are our thoughts:
Wins are on
Simon Patterson
Obviously there’s still a bit of work to do before it happens, but I’m absolutely convinced given what we’ve already seen from both him and Aprilia that before the end of the season Martin will be back challenging for podiums and maybe even race wins at some circuits.
Of course that’s not going to happen right away, and there’s still work to do both to get him back used to racing in MotoGP and to complete his adaption process to the RS-GP, but the form early in the season of both works rider Marco Bezzecchi and Trackhouse's rookie Ai Ogura very much suggests that the Aprilia is quite a friendly machine and that it shouldn’t take Martin too long to get to grips with it.
Moreover, Bezzecchi’s results highlight that the bike is very much the second best machine on the grid right now behind only Ducati, and while it’s unlikely that Martin is going to be able to overcome the might of Marc Marquez in half a season, there’ll certainly be some circuits where he can reduce the gap to the red bikes in front.
Plus Bezzecchi’s biggest weakness this year has arguably been qualifying. That’s one area where you’d expect Martin to be stronger than him before too long. Get that right, and the nature of MotoGP in 2025 means that good results will inevitably follow.
Aprilia's traditional slump is a risk
Glenn Freeman
I've seen enough in Bezzechi's upturned form after his rough start to the year to make me think that Martin can win a race this year. No disrespect to Bezzecchi, but a fully fit and functioning Martin is a step above him, so if Bezz can get podiums and a win - which he already has - those results will be on the table for Martin as well.
It'll still require a few things to happen. We don't know how long it'll take Martin to get back to 100%, but Brno looked like a promising base to work from. And victories are going to be incredibly difficult to come by until Marc Marquez has wrapped up the 2025 title. Hopefully once that's happened, there will be some scraps left on the table for others to fight over.
It also requires something else to NOT happen, and that's Aprilia's annoying habit of trailing off during the late-season flyaways. It'll be interesting to see if that is still the case with Martin on the team's books. It'll be a shame if it does happen, because it would likely mean that Aprilia's form fades away just as Martin is fully rediscovering his race sharpness.
Bezz may still be faster on race days
Val Khorounzhiy
What I am expecting - and what I think every side of the arrangement, i.e. the manufacturer, the team and both riders, would be happy enough with - is Martin establishing himself as a superior qualifier than Bezzecchi after a couple of rounds of bedding-in, but retaining a race pace disadvantage to Bezzecchi potentially to the end of the season.
If the Aprilia keeps up the excellent level it had in the run-in to the summer break, this should be enough to keep everyone happy and for Martin to head into 2026 motivated and still keeping his current employer in mind as a genuine, attractive option for the next contract, too.
One thing that could badly compromise this, though, is Aprilia having its conventional post-summer break results wobble. It will be interesting - and crucial - to see whether it has become more resistant to this with its new RS-GP and under the tech stewardship of Fabiano Sterlacchini, relative to the previous Romano Albesiano regime.
A big test of pragmatism
Matt Beer
Credit to both Aprilia and Martin for making this happen at all - it was very hard to imagine at points in the contract row that they’d actually race together again once Martin was fit and him sitting out the rest of 2025 and Aprilia limping on without him seemed the most likely scenario.
But it’s going to be a test of pragmatism from here. Many people have mentioned the IndyCar comparison of Alex Palou attempting to leave Ganassi for McLaren, triggering a huge legal row then staying at Ganassi after all and racking up more titles, proving that you can come back from such a destructive situation and still keep winning.
But Martin’s a more fiery character than Palou, and Aprilia is a relative underdog compared to Ganassi’s status in IndyCar. Wins and titles make it much easier to move on from a contract row. What will be in the back of both Martin and Aprilia’s minds if either lets the other down on track with an error, a failure or underperformance? How much of Martin’s mind will still be on his 2027 team options?
That said, I’m still convinced that Aprilia has shown enough that if someone as flat-out fast as Martin had been fit and on the bike all season then MotoGP 2025 would have been very different. And a lot more interesting.
