One point separates Marco Bezzecchi and Jorge Martin
“I already beat him”. At an early stage Jorge Martin did not hide the awareness within himself that he had already prevailed over Marco Bezzecchi. In 2018, in fact, the two long contested the Moto3 World Championship which was then won by Martin. The Spaniard was one of the announced protagonists of the season riding the Honda of the Gresini team, while Marco Bezzecchi surprised everyone with the KTM prepared by PrustelGP, certainly not the flagship team of the Austrian manufacturer which had as its reference team – that of Aki Ajo, current MotoGP team manager – Darryn Binder and Can Oncu.
Jorge Martin immediately won in Qatar, Marco Bezzecchi got his first World Championship victory right after in Argentina and the arm wrestling went on for a long time finally rewarding the Spaniard with Bezzecchi also overtaken by Fabio Di Giannantonio – Martin’s teammate – in the final standings. Bezzecchi’s season nevertheless convinced KTM to include the Romagna rider among the riders closely followed by the Austrian manufacturer in Moto2, Martin moved up to the middle class in the Ajo team, Bezzecchi in the Tech3 team. Martin started to get good results towards the end of the season, while Bezzecchi did not go beyond tenth place on two occasions as his best result.
At the end of 2020 Martin betrayed KTM to move to MotoGP with Ducati, Marco Bezzecchi ‘exploded’ again reborn also thanks to the Sky VR46 team and here in 2026 we find Martin and Bezzecchi again fighting for the title, this time in MotoGP and with the same bike, the splendid Aprilia RS-GP that is dominating this start of the season.
Meanwhile Martin has enriched his palmares with the second title of his career, achieved in MotoGP in 2024 as a separated man with the Ducati ‘customer’ of the Pramac team. Two years later the Spaniard finds himself in the same situation because this year too he is racing with his bags already packed for Yamaha, but there are many huge details very different that lighten Martin’s psyche rather than weigh it down.
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If in 2024 he could see ghosts everywhere – the middle finger gesture at the finish line in Misano after Bastianini’s very hard tackle on the last lap is just one example – this time no one, absolutely no one in Aprilia, will cheer ‘against’ Martin because the Noale factory is certainly not in a position to allow any kind of ‘preference’ and Massimo Rivola has been very clear on this topic. Aprilia cannot miss the great opportunity to finally win everything and in MotoGP injuries are always around the corner. Having two leaders is a luxury that Aprilia has amply earned, Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi will be able to fight for the title and at this moment it is really difficult to imagine that anyone else could enter the fight for the MotoGP throne left once again vacant by Marc Marquez due to a condition that is to say the least precarious.
So it will be Martin against Bezzecchi, with the former already having two titles in the trophy case and the wind at his back and the latter called to the last very difficult step to go from an excellent second rider to MotoGP world champion in a few months. It basically starts from zero to zero, the bike is the same, the team too, the rivals are not there or at least those who could be (Acosta) do not have their wonderful Aprilia. Will the ending be different from 2018? We will find out.
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