For all of the MotoGP riders with stories to tell after the most dramatic British Grand Prix imaginable at Silverstone on Sunday – and there were many of them, as the press debriefs wildly vacillated between elation and devastation up and down the paddock – it was a rider who wasn’t even at the track who was front of mind.
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Two weeks after reigning world champion Jorge Martin made the eight-hour drive from his base in Andorra to Le Mans for clandestine meetings with Aprilia’s management with the express purpose to extract himself from a project he didn’t feel he could win with – despite not even completing a single Grand Prix for his new employer because of myriad injuries – all eyes were on the Italian factory’s response.
The first came in words, courtesy of an Aprilia statement ahead of Silverstone that made it very clear that the hastily-signed contract between rider and team after Martin needed a landing place after his Ducati future became untenable is “valid and in effect, and as such, must be respected by both parties until its expiration (at the end of 2026).”
The second? In actions, with Marco Bezzecchi’s remarkable Grand Prix victory – his first for two seasons and Aprilia’s first since April 2024 – showing the wantaway world champion that Aprilia can be a bike to win on, just as long as he’s prepared to give it a try.
Aprilia team boss Massimo Rivola didn’t miss his opportunity. Asked by the world TV feed for his thoughts after Bezzecchi’s win, Rivola was blunt.
“This is a message to Jorge – our bike can win,” he said.
Bezzecchi – like Martin, new to Aprilia this season after also coming across from Ducati – hadn’t finished better than sixth in a Grand Prix over the opening six rounds, and had been one of the major disappointments of the season before Sunday.
Japanese rookie Ai Ogura, riding for Aprilia’s second-string Trackhouse Racing team, had a fifth place on debut in Thailand and had been, on balance, more impressive.
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But given a set of circumstances in which to shine, Bezzecchi reprised the form that saw him become a frontrunner for Ducati in 2023, when he took all three of his previous premier-class victories and finished third in that year’s world championship.
Cool pre-summer temperatures in the earliest Grand Prix ever held at Silverstone – the mercury struggled to hit 16 degrees on Sunday – made Michelin’s soft-compound front tyre a risky, but possible option. From 10th on the grid, Bezzecchi had little to lose by chancing his arm.
The gusting wind that whipped around the circuit that traverses an old World War II airfield – allied to that cold temperature – pulled the handbrake on Ducati’s usual dominance, the number of aerodynamic winglets on the GP24s and 25s in the field a hindrance rather than a help in the unpredictable conditions.
When long-time race leader Fabio Quartararo’s charge to a likely first win in three years went up in smoke through no fault of his own, Bezzecchi was there to pick up the pieces. Rivola beamed. Bezzecchi buzzed. Martin, back home in Andorra for the sixth time in seven race weekends this season, had more to think about than he had an hour earlier when he switched on his big-screen TV.
Is one win enough to change Martin’s mind about Aprilia? Has too much damage been done to a relationship between a new rider/team marriage that hasn’t even gone through the ‘getting to know you’ phase? And what happens now?
Bezzecchi – who, for his part, made his feelings clear when asked about the turmoil ahead of the Silverstone weekend when he said “I don’t focus on any of the bulls**t that is not regarding me” – had other things in mind after becoming, remarkably, the 11th different rider to win over the past 11 British Grands Prix.
“It’s difficult to explain all the emotions that are going inside my head and my body, but the first win with Aprilia … I’m very happy and proud because they believed in me, and I wanted to change [from Ducati],” he said.
“We believed in each other for this project. It’s a very great moment for everyone in the team and in the factory in Noale. They never give up and it has been a tough time, we cannot say [it’s] not.
“Finally, a good day has come.”
‘IT’S SO S**T’: QUARTARARO CRUSHED BY NEAR-MISS
Quartararo looked set to the be the rider to break the bizarre statistical anomaly of 10 different Silverstone winners in the past 10 starts on Sunday – the Frenchman won for Yamaha in his 2021 world championship season – but was an emotional mess after his long-awaited first win since the 2022 German Grand Prix went begging.
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The Frenchman broke the all-time Silverstone MotoGP lap record with a brilliant pole position on Saturday, but the 10-lap sprint race later that afternoon – where he faded to seventh and finished behind five of the six Ducatis in the field – showed that his volcanic one-lap pace could only do so much to combat the chasm between the Yamaha and Ducati in race performance, much as Yamaha has improved this season.
Sunday’s cool weather – like Bezzecchi, Quartararo rolled the dice by using the soft front tyre – gave him another card to play, and the Frenchman bolted once the lights went out and led by over five seconds on lap six, seemingly cruising to victory with the Ducati armada floundering in the windy conditions.
A 12th MotoGP win looked a formality until lap 12, when Quartararo’s rear ride-height device – which he’d deployed exiting turn five for the straight down to the next corner as he’d done on every lap previously – became jammed.
Quartararo frantically braked hard into turn seven to try to release the device, but soon crawled to a halt, his anguish obvious.
The 26-year-old was distraught when he made it back to the Yamaha garage, but had composed himself by the time he met with the press, despite some glassy-eyed moments.
“That was our race,” he said after Silverstone’s bizarre run of pole-sitters not winning the race since 2014 was extended by another year.
“Everything was really good … I knew where to push, I knew where to exaggerate a little bit more on the braking with the wind. Everything was under control until that lap.
“It gives me hope, but f**k it’s so s**t what happened today because we improved the bike, and when everything is going in a good way we know we are fast.”
Bezzecchi, once he made it to second place on lap six, knew he had nothing for Quartararo’s pace – “Fabio was really far … it’s a shame for him,” he said – while Quartararo said he felt the Yamaha was the best it has been since he engaged in a season-long fight with Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia in his title defence in 2022, which he lost in a final-round showdown in Valencia.
“We have made a step – not enough – but I feel like we are getting stronger and stronger,” he said.
“I was riding really, really smooth and I felt like we were going super fast. There will be more opportunities, hopefully.
“I made a great race – not the greatest of my career, but of the last three or four years – so really disappointed, but we have to keep our head up.”
MARQUEZ RIDES HIS LUCK TO BOOST MARGIN
Other than Bezzecchi – and perhaps his boss Rivola – the biggest winner at Silverstone was Ducati’s Marc Marquez, who was left thanking his lucky stars after a certain non-score ended up with him extending his championship lead after finishing in third place.
Marquez, after nearest title rival and younger brother Alex Marquez crashed at the first corner after immediately taking the lead, then fell from the lead of the race on the next lap, right before the race was red-flagged for oil on the track after a lap one collision between Honda’s Aleix Espargaro and Ducati’s Franco Morbidelli, Morbidelli’s bike spewing fluid across the run through the final two corners.
As fewer than three laps had been completed before the race was red-flagged, all riders who had crashed out were eligible to take the restarted race, and Marquez extended his championship lead to 24 points after finishing third to his brother’s fifth, a result that came only after he’d fought back from running wide on lap three and dropping to ninth place.
“Today we were super lucky,” Marquez admitted.
“I did a mistake, so for that reason I’m angry. It’s true that we finished third and we finished in front of our main contender for the championship, but I’m angry to myself because I did a mistake on turn 11, and I know why.
“In the first lap I was super cautious there, but in the next lap I say ‘I will take more risk’ but when I take more risk, it arrives a massive wind and it pushed me out [of the track] and I lose the front [of the bike]. I was super lucky with the red flag and the restart of the race give to me another opportunity, and I did other mistakes but we finished third on our worst Sunday.”
Marquez, who finished second to his brother in Saturday’s sprint, described his comfort level in the tricky conditions as “a disaster”.
“Most of the grid went to the medium [compound tyre] because we know that the medium is not working well, but for some riders and manufacturers it was the only way to finish the race.
“That feeling today was not the best one, but we saved the day.”
MILLER BREAKS THE DROUGHT, AGIUS PLAYS IT PERFECTLY
After three successive events where he’d failed to score points, Jack Miller felt Silverstone was a “very positive” weekend for Pramac Yamaha after his first points-finish of the year for ninth in Saturday’s sprint led to a seventh-place finish on Sunday, a race where he sat second to Quartararo for five laps.
Like Bezzecchi and Quartararo – and second-place finisher, Honda’s Johann Zarco – the Australian used the grip of his soft front tyre to fly to the front of the pack chasing Quartararo from sixth on the grid within two laps, but drifted back late in the race to cross the line 7.398secs behind Bezzecchi for his most competitive showing since he was fifth in Texas in round three.
“I could tell the Ducati boys were struggling to get temperature in the front tyre and we were on the softs, so it was working pretty good from the get-go,” he said.
“I tried to do a similar pace like Fabio [Quartararo] there at the beginning, but I understood after three to four laps that wasn’t going to be feasible for the duration of the race.
“I settled in and was comfy behind Marc [Marquez] and with about four laps to go, I could see Marc’s pace dropped a little bit and I was sizing up where I could make a move on him. Right at that moment, as soon as I thought about putting a move on him, [Franco] Morbidelli came through and then all hell broke loose with myself, him and Alex [Marquez].
“It was fun, but it would have been nice to finish a couple of positions more in front. When I got into a dogfight with those boys, Alex [Marquez] passed me into [turn] nine and I got stuck in the dirty s**t on the outside and let [Pedro] Acosta through, that was heartbreaking to say the least. But it was nice to be back there challenging those boys again today.”
Of the three other Australians in action at Silverstone, Sydney 19-year-old Senna Agius took a dramatic first world championship win in the Moto2 category when he swept past Spaniard Aron Canet and Colombian David Alonso as they battled for the lead in the penultimate corner on the last lap, winning by 0.434secs to become the first Australian to win an intermediate-class Grand Prix since Remy Gardner in Portugal in November 2021.
“I honestly can’t believe it,” Agius said.
“I thought I’d try to get a podium … when Alonso went for Aron, I saw Aron square him up and I said ‘this is going to go bad’ so I waited and let the brake off, and I couldn’t believe it. It hasn’t sunk in yet … Grand Prix winner, it sounds pretty bloody good to me.”
In Moto3, Darwin’s Joel Kelso crashed from the lead of the race on lap four, while Wollongong’s Jacob Roulstone finished in 13th place.
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