Aprilia scored its first MotoGP podium lock-out after Jorge Martin led factory team-mate Marco Bezzecchi and Trackhouse rider Ai Ogura at the French Grand Prix on Sunday.
Martin struck a psychological blow by hunting down and passing Bezzecchi, whom he had yet to defeat in a Sunday race this season, cutting the Italian’s championship lead to a single point.
This was Martin’s first win since the 2024 Indonesian Grand Prix, when he was on his way to the world title with Pramac Ducati.
Expectations of a straightforward wet race, which had been the paddock assumption since the beginning of the weekend, went out of the window when race day provided typically inconclusive Le Mans weather after all.
The riders went to the grid with the track dry and facing a tricky choice of tyres even if it stayed that way. Then, after La Marseillaise rang out several minutes before the start, spots of rain began to fall.
But the precipitation gathered no momentum before the start, and there was no question of riders ducking into the pitlane at the end of the warm-up lap as they had at this race a year earlier.
So they went to the grid with what was considered the optimum dry tyre. The majority went with the hard front, although Alex Marquez and Fabio Quartararo were among the front-runners to opt for the soft front.
Marco Bezzecchi, Aprilia Racing
Photo by: Loic Venance / AFP via Getty Images
As it turned out, the race stayed entirely dry and the riders simply had to manage the tyres they had chosen.
There was no repeat of Martin’s Saturday heroics at the start, but polesitter Francesco Bagnaia appeared to stutter after a good initial getaway, allowing Bezzecchi to take the early lead ahead of the battling Pedro Acosta (KTM) and Quartararo.
Soon enough, Bagnaia began to find his rhythm and it became clear Quartararo didn’t have the pace to run at the very front. Ten laps into the race, then, it had settled into a battle between Bezzecchi, Bagnaia and Acosta, with a gap of almost two seconds to the battling Martin and Fabio di Giannantonio, who had finally managed to get a reasonable start on his VR46 Ducati.
Lurking menacingly behind them was Ogura, who had left himself with less work to do than usual after a decent qualifying and start. He was only 3.6s off the lead at this point, with his customary late race charge still almost certainly still on its way.
On lap 16, the tension at the front broke as Bagnaia fell at the Dunlop Chicane. This was seemingly a cue for the likes of Martin and Ogura, who had clearly done well to look after their tyres, to really get going.
Martin dispensed with Acosta on lap 18, opening up the very real possibility that he could catch his team-mate for the win. After all, a third of the race was still remaining.
In the end, he completed the task with very little drama: Bezzecchi had no answer. Martin slipped through at the chicane with the best part of four laps left, and came home unthreatened to put the seal on his comeback from a nightmare, injury-ridden 2025 season with Aprilia.
Jorge Martin, Aprilia Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images
A little further back, Ogura was matching Martin’s progress. He passed di Giannantonio on lap 21, then pounced on the struggling Acosta on lap 23. He briefly looked a reasonable bet to grab second from Bezzecchi as well, but ran out of time to sneak a wheel up the inside of the factory bike before the chequered flag.
Di Giannantonio also managed to demote Acosta, helping himself to fourth after a solid race. Sixth behind Acosta was Quartararo, the best finisher on the soft front tyre. The home hero had done well to stop the bleeding after his initial drop down the field, bottling up Joan Mir for much of the race. He had also done much better than his fellow soft-shod rider Alex Marquez, who had fallen heavily while running in the midfield early on.
Mir eventually fell from his factory Honda, which opened the door for Enea Bastianini to finish seventh for Tech 3 KTM, ahead of Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia), Fermin Aldegeuer (Gresini Ducati) and Luca Marini (Honda).
Johann Zarco’s weekend ended with an 11th place that had to go down as disappointing after the searing pace the local favourite had shown on Friday.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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