Trackhouse team principal Davide Brivio believes Ai Ogura and Rul Fernandez deserve all the credit for beating the factory Aprilia team to victory in the Dutch Grand Prix.
Ogura led Fernandez in a historic 1-2 for the American squad in Sunday’s MotoGP race at Assen, with the two Trackhouse riders successfully overhauling polesitter Jorge Martin in the final laps.
The result was the culmination of a perfect weekend for Trackhouse in the Netherlands after Fernandez won the sprint race on Saturday and Ogura finished right behind him in second.
While Marco Bezzecchi was the fastest rider throughout practice and Martin delivered the fastest lap in qualifying, the factory Aprilia riders were no match for the satellite Trackhouse team when it counted the most.
Brivio said last weekend’s results were down to Trackhouse riders making the difference and not the team extracting more performance out of the RS-GP compared to the factory.
“It's important also to understand and to know that we have exactly the same material [as the works Aprilia team],” Brivio said. “We share all the information. Our engineers have meetings all together everyday, so that's full openness on everything.
“I think, probably this weekend, our riders were better. They found the way to be faster, because in the last sector, especially Ai but also Raul were fantastic.
“We had an incredible and massive improvement compared to last year. I just think our riders probably found a way to be faster, both together.
“There's nothing we do better than the factory team, rather than just go out and try to do the best we can.”
Both Fernandez and Ogura underperformed at times during the 2025 season, with Trackhouse scoring only 261 points compared to 395 for Noale’s self-entered team.
This year, however, Aprilia and Trackhouse occupy the top two spots in the standings, with the gap between the two having narrowed down to 73 points.
“It's incredible for many reasons,” Brivio said of the 1-2 finish. “The team arrived in the paddock quite young. We're not a factory team.
“We had Ai Ogura as a rookie last year, growing up. We had Raul Fernandez with great talent, great potential, and we were trying to put him in a position to express the talent. Aprilia did a great job with the development.”
Aprilia Racing CEO Massimo Rivola did not give a definitive answer when asked how Trackhouse did a better job than the factory squad at Assen, only saying the result would lift up Noale’s overall level.
“I'm really honestly happy for them. I always said that I wanted to see the day where they can beat us and they did it, two days in a row,” he said.
“We share all the information, we have meetings with our engineers together with them. We have Fabiano Sterlacchini [Aprilia technical director] and many people sharing the information with them, and so we are very happy about what they are doing.
“We need them, we need them to be fast, because if they are fast, it's likely that we learn something also from them and then we get faster too."
What went wrong with the Aprilia duo?
Martin led a large part of the race from pole position but was ultimately powerless to defend from the Trackhouse riders, who swept past him in quick succession on laps 17 and 18.
Rivola said Martin lacked the pace of the Trackhouse riders and was happy to settle for third and take the championship lead.
“I think in this race weekend he extracted the maximum of what he could,” he said of the 2024 champion. “You can see that on Friday and even on Saturday morning, he was not so confident with the bike compared to the other three.
“So, this weekend, he showed that when it's time to deliver, he does the right thing. That is something very important for his vision of the championship.”
Aprilia missed out on a potential 1-2-3-4 result after Bezzecchi crashed out on lap 2 while chasing Ducati’s Marc Marquez for third place.
The 27-year-old was transported to a hospital for examination, but was discharged later on Sunday after scans confirmed he did not suffer any injuries.
Bezzecchi did not appear for his post-race arrangement to provide an explanation for his high-speed incident at Turn 15, but Rivola believes the crash was of his own making.
“Simply too fast,” he said.” I honestly think the Aprilia was strong not just in Turn 15, in all the very fast parts of the circuit the Aprilia showed that it has something special.
But we need to fulfil and get the maximum with all four bikes, not just three.
“Obviously we missed one bike, I think we had the chance to have four Aprilias in front, so it's a pity not to fulfil what it could be possible to achieve.”
