Martin leads Márquez – against expectations they both scored the same number of points at Mandalika
MotoGP
Reigning world champion Marc Márquez went into last weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix expecting the worst. He knew Mandalika’s flowing layout and heat-resistant rear tyre would better suit the corner-speed Aprilias than his stop-and-go Ducati, so he might struggle to finish inside the top four. Meanwhile, title rival Jorge Martin was expected to score big and increase his slight championship lead.
Márquez also knew Mandalika was his nightmare circuit, which had treated him so badly in his previous four visits that he hadn’t finished a single GP at the track.
Thus Aprilia knew this was a golden opportunity to inflict maximum damage on Márquez and give Martin a substantial points advantage going into the last few races.
Instead, Márquez for once lucked out at Mandalika, while Aprilia could hardly believe the RS-GP’s technical superiority failed to deliver Martin a bigger title advantage. Both riders scored 22 points over the weekend, so they will go into next week’s Australian GP separated by two points, same as they went into the Indonesian GP.
Ironically, Aprilia’s problem was that its RS-GP was almost too dominant at Mandalika. Although Martin had been the Noale brand’s fastest rider at the previous three races, this time he couldn’t match team-mate Marco Bezzecchi and Trackhouse Aprilia’s Raul Fernandez, who seemed certain to take points off him just when he really needed them.
“In the fast corners the Aprilias are in another league – they have massive traction,” explained VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, who rides a Desmosedici GP26, just like Márquez’s. “I think we’ve got better speed through the slower parts of the circuit: sector 1, 3 and a bit of 4. But it’s quite clear their pace is three to four tenths better than ours.”
By Friday evening most people in pitlane knew Aprilia was so far ahead that it might lock out the podium in both races and might even achieve the brand’s first one-two-three-four.
And then everything turned upside down on Saturday afternoon.
The sprint chain reaction: Di Giannantonio and Márquez made contact, Bezzecchi took avoiding action, fell and took Fernandez with him. Martin couldn’t believe his luck…
When Di Giannantonio out-braked Marc Márquez into Turn 1, the pair made contact, Márquez’s right knee tagging the VR46 rider’s left boot, which knocked his Ducati into first gear. Meanwhile pole-sitter Fernandez and Bezzecchi were jostling for position to their left. When Di Giannantonio’s GP26 slowed suddenly, Márquez lifted up to avoid further contact, then Bezzecchi lifted up, Fernandez hit him and the two Aprilias went careering into the gravel trap.
Meanwhile, Martin, who had started from the middle of the second row, swept past the carnage to take the lead.
“I saw they were four into the first corner and I knew they weren’t going to make it, so I just waited and took the good line and then I went through,” he said.
By half-distance, Martin was on his way to maximum sprint points, Márquez 1.5 seconds back, unable to match his speed.
And then more drama. Martin’s dash told him his front tyre was under the minimum pressure, so he surrendered his lead to Márquez to use the Ducati’s oven-hot draft to bring his front tyre back up to pressure. All that seemed to destabilise him, because he lost two more places to Di Giannantonio and Trackhouse Aprilia’s Ai Ogura.
“I was able to make a big gap to Marc, then I realised I was under pressure, so I had to let Marc pass and from that point everything started to go a bit difficult,” he explained. “That’s why I made a mistake with two laps to go.”
Márquez could hardly believe his luck – he had taken maximum points to move into the outright championship lead for the first time this year.
“I was expecting to lose points against Martin,” said the 33-year-old Spaniard, who suffered like everyone in the vicious tropical conditions. “Our target here is to not lose a lot of points. Today we gained. It was not what we expected, but you never know in racing.
“It was a super-intense race. I was pushing a lot and then after the podium I felt some dizziness, which has never happened before.”
On Sunday everything went right for Aprilia. Bezzecchi scored his first victory since May’s Mugello GP, Fernandez finished an heroic second, despite two broken fingers on his braking hand, Martin third and Ogura fourth.
Bezzecchi and Martin congratulate each other, both destroyed by 40 minutes wrestling burning hot motorcycles around Mandalika
MotoGP
Márquez finished sixth, 10 seconds down on Bezzecchi and unable to beat Pedro Acosta, even though the KTM rider had a nightmare trying to keep his front tyre legal, letting Márquez past several times.
“I was riding the whole race with the front tyre pressure, which was fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, not fine, not fine, not fine, fine, fine, fine, not fine, not fine, not fine,” explained Acosta, who like everyone in MotoGP, is fed up with the tyre pressure regulations.
“I mean, we look like donkeys, you know? I think Marc was having the same problems as me because he also let me pass him.”
Márquez knew he would have finished in a similar position in the sprint, if it wasn’t for all the drama.
“I wasn’t braking late – no confidence,” he said. “I felt like there was more to lose than to gain.
“On Thursday, if you’d said to me that I’d lose only three points to Bezzecchi and I’d equal Martin, it would’ve been a dream. I’m just so happy how the weekend ended.”
Martin had been Aprilia’s fastest rider at Misano, Red Bull Ring and Motegi but this time he couldn’t match Bezzecchi and Fernandez.
“There were two corners where they were super-fast, and I couldn’t match their speed,” he said on Sunday evening. “I tried to analyse how they were doing it, but I wasn’t able to match them. I was losing one-tenth in each of those corners, then I was trying to recover in the rest of the track.”
Martin might have been a bit faster if his crew hadn’t decided to avoid another tyre-pressure disaster.
“Today, I think we were too safe, so the tyre was over-pressured and locking a lot into corners,” he added.
Bezzecchi started 2026 in stunning form, winning four of the first seven races, before mistakes and injuries cost him the championship lead. His Sunday success was his first in 10 races and significant because it just about keeps him in the title hunt. He now stands 46 points behind Martin and 44 behind Márquez, with 185 points up for grabs, or 148 if Qatar doesn’t happen.
Fernandez’s ride to second with two broken fingers on his braking hand was nothing short of heroic
MotoGP
“I feel super, super happy,” said Bezzecchi, who overcame early leader Fernandez to win by four seconds. “I had a very good beginning of the year until after Mugello, then some hard races, a bit of a hard time. And then after the injury [a broken collarbone sustained at Sachsenring], the comeback wasn’t bad, but it was difficult to reach the top step of the podium. Fortunately, we were able to do it today.
“Raul was much, much stronger than me at the beginning. It was difficult to stay in contact, but after a couple of laps I went in my rhythm and I started riding well.”
Fernandez’s result was a miracle, considering he had to change his braking technique.
“My mechanics made some changes to the bike to try and keep my hand on the handlebar,” said Fernandez after his first podium since his British GP victory. “In warm-up I changed my body position in braking and I felt good.”
Márquez during a pre-event promo event on Lombok island
Liberty Media’s MotoGP Sports and Entertainment Group has announced the introduction of hefty fines for riders who skip the increasing number of promotional activities imposed upon them.
This follows Marc Márquez and Fabio Quartararo missing the previous weekend’s kart race at Motegi, Japan.
With immediate effect, Liberty will fine riders €5000 (£4200) for first offences, with bigger penalties for subsequent violations. The fines were initially focused on requiring all riders to spend a minimum of 10 minutes with fans in the Hero Walk, which takes place on Sunday morning after they’ve been paraded around the circuit.
Many riders from Márquez down are frustrated by Liberty cramming their schedules with more and more promo events, which eat into the time they usually spend working with their teams to hone their bikes for Saturday and Sunday races and also preparing themselves physically and mentally.
“As riders, we are the first to want MotoGP to grow bigger and bigger,” said Márquez on Sunday. “But I think we can have different ways to grow the sport without pushing the riders so much.
“Now we have a lot of things to do, because it’s not only MotoGP things. We have sponsor things during the weekend, team meetings, then Sunday warm-up, then you change quickly for the parade, then the hero walk, with a lot of people, then you come back for another team meeting after the warm-up because you didn’t have time before.
“In the end, we are athletes. Next year, the schedule is even more intense. We are the first that want MotoGP to grow, but there are other ways to grow the championship. We have the show on the racetrack, not outside.”
Sweeping changes to the MotoGP schedule have been requested by the teams. But will they reduce costs and improve the racing or make MotoGP even more dangerous?
Acosta was even more outspoken.
“I totally, totally disagree [with the fines], totally disagree,” he said. “I mean, you cannot force riders to do something, taking into consideration all the things going on with riders, which maybe the organisation doesn’t know.
“Like Raul today – he has broken bones, so he needs to take care about that. Maybe if the finger is painful he cannot brake and the mess would be even bigger. For this kind of thing, many, many times we don’t go to these [promo] things. The organisation should back off a bit and give us a bit of space, like what Marc did in Japan, I totally agreed with what he did.”
However, Acosta doesn’t see the much-talked-about MotoGP riders union happening.
“The moment should come, but I think it never will come,” he added. “Because we are all looking for our own interests; same with the teams and the brands. The careers of riders will be shorter and shorter and shorter. We will see legends that will leave the paddock and not want to come back because the stress is too high. I hope this situation improves.”
The original plans for the Mandalika circuit
Mandalika Special Economic Zone
By the time MotoGP returns to Indonesia next October (unless the ongoing conflict in the Middle East forces the 2027 event to swap dates with the Qatar round in March), Mandalika will be well on its way to becoming a street circuit, as originally planned.
The Mandalika circuit was originally conceived a decade ago as part of the Mandalika Special Economic Zone, which is developing Lombok’s south coast for tourism.
Original designs for the circuit included hotels, homes and other facilities, which will use parts of the racetrack for access, hence its street-circuit status. But only now, six years after the venue hosted its first major event, a round of the 2021 World Superbike series, are investors ready to commence construction.
The first development of villa properties within the circuit will be built on the inside of Turns 12 and 13. The developers are offering sweeteners to buyers, who will be able to buy luxury cars to be kept in their trackside Mandalika garages without incurring Indonesia’s 90% import duty on luxury vehicles. Alongside the villas will be a paddock clubhouse. This concept is based on the USA’s popular private pavement, which builds racetracks for private use by wealthy individuals. Basically, golf clubs for petrol-heads.
