Will Aprilia challenge for the 2026 MotoGP title?

Are MotoGP’s tectonic plates finally shifting? Because the results of the last two Sundays of 2025 suggest they are.

Marco Bezzecchi and his Aprilia RS-GP led the Portuguese and Valencia Grands Prix from start to finish, while the factory Ducati team scored just two points, Nicolo Bulega finishing 15th in both races.

At Valencia, Trackhouse Aprilia’s Raúl Fernández chased Bezzecchi home, seven days after he was sidelined by injury at Portimao. That gave the Noale factory its first 1-2 since 2023.

Bezzecchi’s third victory of the year secured third place in the riders’ championship, a best-ever for Aprilia, and second in the constructors’ championship, another best. Although the points gap to Ducati, which won its sixth consecutive constructors’ prize, was still huge: 768 to 418.

Aprilia’s six-time world champion Max Biaggi joked to Italian TV that there’s long been no doubt that Aprilia is the championship’s top Italian brand, because Ducati, owned by Audi and VW, is German.

The RS-GP is finally the bike it’s been promising to be for the last few seasons, and on its day, it’s at least as good as Ducati’s Desmosedici, in 2024 and 2025 guises. So, the big question is this: will Aprilia challenge Ducati for the 2026 MotoGP crown?

Aprilia should definitely be in the fight for the MotoGP’s final 1000cc title because both Bezzecchi and the RS-GP became one during 2025, which is presumably why the chirpy Italian proposed marriage to his motorcycle at Valencia, possibly the most anthropomorphic act in MotoGP history. Riders often like to pretend their machines are living beings, by kissing and patting them after a great performance (and thumping them after a bad one) but this was next level.

The RS-GP has always had a good front end – DNA inherited from the company’s beautiful 250cc GP bikes, according to Aprilia engineers – and now finally it has a rear end to match, so it’s the sweetest-handling bike on the grid.

During 2025, Aprilia worked out how to extract maximum performance from Michelin’s current rear slick, during braking and acceleration, helping the bike stop and go like the Ducati. However, the RS-GP’s biggest strength is still its front end, which is why it’s such a delight at fast, flowing tracks, where it gives riders the confidence they need to attack corners at warp speed.

Factory engineers also improved their way of working, both in the Noale race department and in the garage at races. In the past, the RS-GP often showed well at the start of a weekend, then lost its way as the other bikes improved.

This year, the bike usually got better as the weekend progressed, although there were still a few hiccups, most recently at Sepang, where the bike didn’t gel with the rear-tyre allocation, leaving Bezzecchi outside the top ten. If Aprilia is to challenge for the title in 2026 it will need to make sure it can achieve consistent performance, from the first race to the last.

Of course, there’s one big factor that wasn’t at play at the last few races of 2025. Marc Márquez has been out of action since he injured his right shoulder for the umpteenth time during the Indonesian GP in early October, seven days after he secured the championship.

The strength of Aprilia in the last four races (the RS-GP scored more than twice the number of points during those weekends than it did at the season’s first four) must be judged against Márquez’s absence, because next year the 32-year-old will surely by Ducati’s strongest rider once again.

The seven-time MotoGP king utterly dominated 2025, despite – he revealed last week – two damaged screws in the metalwork used to bolt his right arm together during the surgery he underwent in 2022. One screw was bent, one broken, and these were fixed when surgeons operated on the shoulder to fix the Mandalika damage.

Márquez was at Valencia to pick up his 2025 trophy, wearing a customised team cap, with a handwritten note hanging from its peak, saying “I’m doing very well, thanks,” in answer to relentless questioning from people asking about his latest injury comeback.

The Ducati factory team’s fortunes since it lost its number one at Mandalika have been bizarre. The two Sunday points scored by Marc’s replacement Bulega have been its only two since then, against the 102 scored by Márquez and team-mate Pecco Bagnaia on the first four Sundays of the season.

Bagnaia’s 2025 performance rollercoaster ended with a luckless twist – a puncture at Sepang and a clout from Johann Zarco at Valencia, which sent him into the gravel, where he toppled over.