Will Aprilia’s first MotoGP victory of 2025 convince reigning world champion Jorge Martin to stick with the Noale manufacturer? Maybe but possibly not, because everyone knows Silverstone is the RS-GP’s happiest hunting ground – the bike scored its first podium there in 2021 and its second win there two years later – so success at the British track doesn’t mean it’s suddenly turned a corner in development.

The bigger question, of course, is why any rival manufacturer would be interested in a rider who has so little commitment to a project.

Anyway, congratulations to Aprilia and to Marco Bezzecchi, for his first win since the 2023 Indian grand prix, when he rode a Ducati GP22.

Felicitations also to Johann Zarco, who followed his fairytale Le Mans victory with a rousing ride to second place on his LCR Honda RC213V, which is now good enough to beat every Ducati – GP24 and GP25 – on the grid. On its day.

And what a strange day at Silverstone. Few tracks are more challenging than the old airfield circuit, which is a much more complicated Phillip Island, and Sunday was cool and windy that riders were caught between a rock and a hard place with the front tyre allocation, or rather between the medium front, which was a bit too hard, and the soft front, which was a bit too soft.

No one knew if the soft would last the distance, because no one had run race distance in practice, but for some it was the safer option: better to have good grip, then manage what’s left, than have iffy grip from start to finish.

All of Sunday’s fastest riders ran the soft front: Bezzecchi, Zarco and Yamaha‘s Fabio Quartararo, who dazzled the largely empty grandstands (built for July’s massive Formula 1 round) by disappearing into the distance when the red-flagged race was restarted, after officials had cleared up oil dropped by Franco Morbidelli‘s fallen Ducati GP24.

Quartararo was a joy to behold as he rung his Yamaha‘s neck, proving how fast the M1 can be with an empty track ahead, allowing him to take the wide, sweeping lines preferred by inline-four machines.

The 2021 MotoGP champion’s DNF was a major kick in the gut for a rider that’s never lost faith despite bringing a knife to a gun fight for the last few seasons. (Take note, Jorge Martin.) He had the race won when his ride-height device broke after half distance – on his final lap he was still the fastest man on track, with a 4.5-second lead over Bezzecchi.

And all that despite riding the slowest bike in the race, his M1 a yawning 6.2mph (10km/h) down on the fastest, Pedro Acosta‘s 207.8mph (334.6km/h) KTM.

The Frenchman was understandably distraught, because how unlucky can you be? His bike could’ve stopped at pretty much any race over the last two or three seasons and it wouldn’t really have mattered. Instead the gremlins lay in wait, waiting until he had glory in his hand, before striking. The bastards!

Quartararo is always happy to tell his story to journalists, whatever happens, so he started his Sunday media scrum with a smile on his face. But halfway through, it all got too much and he broke down, crying.

“F**k, it’s so shit what happened!” he said. And he was right.

But at least he had proved that Yamaha is getting there. And yet, neither Quartararo nor his engineers had really expected to be so fast on Sunday. His Saturday pole lap – once again with a clear track, so he could work his magic – was a stunner, but he dropped like a stone in the sprint. What was different? Nothing much, just a switch from the soft rear to the medium for the longer race and a slightly slower pace.

“For me, the improvement is a consequence of keeping the same base since Qatar – only small modifications, only details,” he said. Plus a new throttle technique and tweaked torque delivery and traction control. “I’m especially trying to be smoother with the throttle… We are also doing a better job with the electronics.”

Pramac Yamaha rider Jack Miller was also fast at Silverstone, doing great things chasing Marc Márquez for third, but he had the usual struggles of an inline-four rider fighting a bunch of V4s.

“About four laps to go Marc’s pace dropped a bit, so I was sizing up where I could make a move on him when Morbidelli came through, then all hell broke loose with myself, him and Alex [Márquez],” said the Aussie. “It’s tough when you get in a dogfight with those boys – we’ve got a really strong package but we’ve got to ride our lines and keep momentum up, while they’re able to park it, squirt it and not lost much time.”

Quartararo’s fellow Frenchman Zarco was once again the Honda hero, proving that Honda is also getting there. There are no magic fixes in MotoGP, so it’s small steps everywhere – engine, chassis, electronics and aero – that are taking the RC213V back towards the front. Most of all, Zarco praised the bike’s front end, which is significant, because the all-important front was always its Achilles heel.

That allows Zarco to ride how he wants and, crucially, to attack, so he was able to make some mind-boggling overtakes in both the sprint and main race.

“Front feeling is our strong point but sometimes I can’t get it and get nervous,” he said. “When it’s there I can play with the rest of the bike to keep it under control.”

Zarco has also worked out how to ride around the chatter/vibration that have afflicted so many riders since Michelin introduced its current rear slick last year.

“I have a lot of vibration when the tyre goes down, but I can adapt my riding without losing speed.”

I asked Zarco what he does with his riding technique and body position to damp out the chatter. “I will not say!” he grinned.

Zarco was the fastest Honda rider but factory rider Luca Marini also deserves praise. The Italian finished eighth, only 3.6 seconds further back, a difference of only 0.19 seconds per lap. And Marini’s speed is a good sign, because he’s the kind of rider that waits until the bike is feeling right before pushing to the limit. That’s why he’s had precisely zero falls so far this season, compared to team-mate Joan Mir‘s nine and Zarco’s seven. Marini was later relegated to 15th by a tyre-pressure penalty.

Honda and Yamaha are getting there thanks to hard work and the concessions rules, but could the biggest difference be the fact that instead of Ducati making its usual forward strides, the Bologna brand has taken a step back?

There is little doubt that the GP24 is currently the best bike on the grid, because there’s something not quite right with the GP25. And on Sunday all six Ducatis were handicapped because neither iteration of the Desmosedici could make the soft front last race distance, so they had to run the medium.

Márquez was obviously not attacking like normal – he was much more hunched on his bike – while brother Alex (who had taken a storming victory ahead of big brother in the sprint) was very much spooked after his Turn 1 crash moments after the first start.

What exactly is wrong with the GP25? It’s all about front feeling, which is so vital for laptimes, because if you can’t feel the front tyre you will be slow into the corner, which means you will be slow through the corner, which will also compromise your exit. The difference is tiny – perhaps three tenths a lap at most tracks, equivalent to a performance loss of around 0.3% – but because MotoGP is so tight that’s a crucial difference.

Marc Márquez is the only GP25 rider who’s going anywhere. The world championship leader stands 72 points ahead of fellow GP25 riders Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio, who had a mostly horrible time at Silverstone. True, Márquez was the luckiest rider in Sunday’s race – able to restart after crashing out of the lead soon after the first start (ironically thanks to Morbidelli, riding for arch-enemy Valentino Rossi) – but he got the job done.

Márquez had struggled all weekend for the first time this year, because Silverstone’s fast corners and cold asphalt exacerbated the GP25’s issues. He lost the front on Friday and again on Sunday, when the west-southwest winds – gusting at over 20mph – contributed to his fall at the Maggotts right-hander.

Bagnaia – who also lost the front on Sunday, falling after the restart – hopes that his team-mate’s struggles may help Ducati fix the GP25.

“It’s easy to see that Marc is not performing like normal,” said Bagnaia. “He is used to going over [riding around] the problems but this track is also making his life difficult… For the first time this season Marc has the same feeling as me, so being in the same direction will help us to understand what to do.”

Bagnaia says the GP25 and GP24 are “directly similar but the feeling is quite different”. So much so that at Silverstone he couldn’t feel the difference between the soft and medium front tyres, which is quite remarkable.

So what are the technical differences between the bikes? Difficult to know exactly, but it’s likely they are something like this…

We know Ducati went into 2025 with a revised engine and revised chassis, designed to fix the rear-pushing-the-front problem that has everyone riding on a knife edge [MotoGP’s current rear slick has so much grip that it actually takes grip away from the front slick]. The new chassis didn’t work as hoped, so Ducati reverted its three GP25 riders to a GP24 chassis.

However, the GP25’s GP24-spec chassis isn’t exactly the same as the actual GP24’s because the GP25’s engine mounts are different (engine internals are basically the same as last year). Why did Ducati make this change? We don’t know, but presumably it’s something to do with adjusting the mass balance or overall machine stiffness. Either way, it’s had a small but significant effect on how the bike feels.

When Marc Márquez was at Honda he could slide the front tyre at will, using his supernatural feeling and lightning-fast reactions to (mostly) stay on two wheels. This year he’s already crashed in two of seven GPs (Jerez and Silverstone) because the front went so fast he couldn’t save it.

The fact is that the true level of the GP25 is what Bagnaia and Di Giannantonio are achieving, not Márquez, just as the true level of last year’s GP23 was what Alex Márquez, Bezzecchi, Morbidelli and Di Giannantonio achieved, not Márquez senior.

The world championship leader admitted he was the luckiest rider on Sunday, thanks to his red-flag reprieve. He was also lucky, because it’s not often that a rider headbutts a barrier in MotoGP, even if it’s a foam barrier.

When he crashed at around 100mph he kept hold of the bike – “It’s my instinct” – all the way across the asphalt run-off, where two rows of foam blocks were installed to prevent riders that run-off at Maggotts from rejoining the track in a dangerous place. He was still travelling at some speed when he realised he was going to hit the barrier, so he stiffened his sinews to avoid a neck injury and headbutted the foam.

“It was like a waterpark!” he laughed. “I was sliding and I saw the wall. I knew it was soft and when I saw I would impact it I knew I had to be strong [in his neck] and go against it.

“I was the luckiest rider today because the red flag gave me a second chance but I need to avoid these mistakes…”

Márquez said the same after his COTA and Jerez crashes. He may be championship favourite but there are no guarantees. Anti-clockwise Aragon next, where he should win both races. In theory…