It will be a fair fight
Aprilia surprised everyone at the start of 2026 by showing a clear leap in quality, making the most of the concessions system devised by Dorna that certainly ‘blocked’ an overwhelming Ducati in the recent past.
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After all, the concessions are precisely designed to try to give the possibility to rebalance the starting grid, even if Ducati’s disappointment for being practically unable to develop the Desmosedici is obviously understandable.
However, concessions change based on sporting results and in the second half of the season Ducati and Aprilia will race on equal terms from this point of view. Ducati, in fact, dropped to band-B by a narrow margin, having collected 84.56% of the available points (the dividing line between band-A and band-B is 85% of the available points).
Aprilia, on the other hand, collected 72.2% of the points and thus leaves band-C, moving up to band-B, which is accessed above 60% of the points at stake. KTM remains in band-C with 49.81% of the points, while Honda returns to D along with Yamaha, having not exceeded 31.79% with a cutoff at 35%. Great news for Fabio Quartararo looking ahead to 2027.
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