Aprilia's MotoGP entrant this season is, well, a rocketship. With Marco Bezzecchi behind the bars, you might as well be trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. It's just not doable. That is, unless you're the wunderkind that is Ducati's Marc Marquez, who, despite being on a worse motorcycle, is still at the front of the pack.
That sorta happens when you're a 9-time world champion. Even when you're presented with something trash, you still make it onto the podium.
But Ducati is getting real about its apparent deficit this season, and saying things likely other teams wouldn't say about their own machines. Chief among them, it's not as good as they wanted it to be, and more importantly, they can't only rely on Marc Marquez being Marc Marquez, i.e., a superhuman speed machine. And that's honestly refreshing.
"Right now, we also have Marc, who isn’t 100% physically, though that’s no excuse since the other Ducatis are also behind," Davide Tardozzi told our siblings at Motorsport, adding, "We can’t always rely on Marc’s talent to make up for our shortcomings. Marc isn't at 100%, but like all great champions, he doesn't dwell on it and just works hard to try to bring home the best possible results."
And Marquez has done that, putting the Ducati routinely in the points and currently sitting fifth in the championship points just behind Pedro Acosta and Fabio Di Giannantonio. The leaders, however, are those of the Aprilias of Marco Bezzecchi and Jorge Martin.
We've already covered the wild aerodynamic development that Aprilia came up with for the 2026 season, in that it resembles an old Formula 1 design. But I don't think anyone would've put the team as the frontrunners going into the season given Ducati's dominance in recent years. The team has been nigh unstoppable, and everyone pegged Marquez as being the favorite to take another championship ahead of the rules change next year, and beating Valentino Rossi's record once and for all.
That hasn't occurred, and Ducati seems to point the blame not at its riders, which is usually the case, but at itself. As for a fix, Tardozzi relayed, "We know the problem and are looking for a way to solve it."
How that will be solved is anyone's guess, as it's no easy feat to replicate Aprilia's trick aerodynamics. Luckily, it won't fall onto Marquez's shoulders this time.
