Historic comeback
From 102 points behind and eighth place in the standings at the end of the Mugello weekend to -19 from the top of the World Championship, with an attached second place in the standings, before the Misano weekend. Between the two Italian MotoGP 2026 rounds Marc Marquez has rebuilt his world title dream, putting himself fully in contention for his tenth crown in his career: something that seemed totally unimaginable after the crash in the Le Mans Sprint and the surgeries that followed. But how did this comeback happen?
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Marquez and Ducati naturally contributed a lot: the red #93 has won four of the last six GPs and in three of these – Balaton, Sachsenring and Aragon – he achieved three Sprint-Grand Prix doubles. The phenomenon from Cervera, however, also had two significant blanks at Assen and Silverstone, where he played defensively trying only to limit the damage.
Collective harakiri
The problem is that all of Marquez’s direct rivals, and especially all the Aprilias, instead made quite a few mistakes, collecting a series of ‘zeros’ that week after week helped Marquez in his climb. Just think that the Ducati champion in this mini six-round championship scored 55 points more than the second, Ai Ogura. Compared to the two factory Aprilia riders, the points gap was huge: between Balaton and Aragon Jorge Martin scored 66 points less than Marquez; Bezzecchi even 107, due to the incredible series of four consecutive ‘zeros’ in the long races following his win at Mugello.
In terms of consistent performance Ogura had been the only rider close to Marquez in this stint of the championship, but his absence from the Aragon round due to injury risks having written the word ‘end’ on the Japanese rider’s world title dream. Another element that certainly helped Marquez recover was the distribution of points among the various Aprilias in all the latest races: Ogura was the main protagonist for the Noale factory at Brno and Assen; Fernandez shone in the Netherlands and at Silverstone, where Jorge Martin also returned as a great protagonist; Bezzecchi instead raised his head at Aragon with two third places; without of course forgetting the combined strike by Jorge Martin at Balaton.
In short, a great Marquez who however also received great gifts and unwrapped them with pleasure. Now, with three riders collected within 24 points and eight rounds still to run (we do not count Qatar as its cancellation seems almost certain) it is almost like starting from scratch. And in the end the strongest will win, but also the one who made the fewest mistakes.
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