Jorge Martin led the MotoGP World Championship on Sunday morning and Marco Bezzecchi led the Grand Prix by the end of the first corner. Aprilia lost both inside twelve laps, and Marc Marquez won the race to arrive level with Martin on 274 points each.

Two losses, and only one of them was a crash

Saturday had read the other way. Martin had arrived at Misano 19 points clear of Marquez, and Marquez won the Sprint, but Bezzecchi and Martin filled the other two steps of the rostrum, Bezzecchi's first top-two Sprint finish of the season.

Bezzecchi's Sunday went first. Dorna's report puts him at Turn 13 on the opening lap, calling him "the home hero, Grand Prix leader and championship contender" in the sentence that records him crashing. He was unhurt, and his own account is a braking one: "When you have a full fuel tank, you have to manage the braking a little bit. I had some shaking in the fast parts, so when I braked, I didn't close the line perfectly, and unfortunately, I lost the front." Dorna records what went with the bike as "Bez's big chance to collect a crucial 25 points", and he ends the weekend 33 points off the lead in third.

Martin's loss took longer and cost more. He took the lead off Marquez on lap 7 at Turn 4, which the report frames as Martin giving "Aprilia something to cheer about". Marquez took it back at Turn 6 on lap 12. Alex Marquez made a move stick at the same corner on lap 14. Pedro Acosta went past at Turn 8 on lap 16 to push Martin off the podium entirely. Fermin Aldeguer took fourth from him at Turn 6 as well, on a lap the report does not number.

Four riders passed the championship leader, three of them between laps 12 and 16, at a circuit where he had been leading minutes earlier. He finished fifth, which is 11 points, and those 11 were every point Aprilia scored in Sunday's Grand Prix. Across the whole weekend the arithmetic is starker: Marquez took 37 of the 37 points on offer, 12 for the Sprint and 25 for the Grand Prix, while Aprilia's two riders took 27 between them, 16 of those on Saturday.

The fade had a cause, and Martin named it. "I had big issues with arm pump," he told motogp.com. "I was feeling good, not pushing like crazy and still pulling away. But then I started to have issues with braking, then opening the throttle, and every lap it got worse and worse. In the end, I couldn't do anything; I was completely out of control on the bike." He has told reporters he must decide after Austria "if I need to undergo surgery or not". A championship leader passed by four riders because his forearm gave out is a different problem from one who was simply slower, and it is the one Aprilia carries to the Red Bull Ring.

Marquez did beat Martin, and that is not where the swing came from

Marquez's pass on lap 12 was real. He won for the 78th time in the class, and the report has him keeping "his cool behind enemy lines" to do it. Nothing about the result was handed to him by the crash: he led, lost the lead, retook it, and stayed there. He said as much himself, and conceded the other half in the same breath: "It's true that Marco's mistake helped a lot," and "the attack from Jorge was a surprise because I didn't expect it. But then I was calm and managed the risk."

Championship arithmetic is a different question, and the two answers do not match. Marquez gained 25 points on the afternoon. Martin lost the difference between a podium he was in position for on lap 7 and the fifth place he took home. Bezzecchi scored nothing from the front of the race. A swing that size in one afternoon does not come from one overtake, and Dorna states the distance covered without embellishing it: "102 points behind seven rounds ago."

Level on points does not mean level in the table. Dorna has Martin heading "to Austria second overall, but level on points with the reigning Champion", and the reason is Article 1.28.7 of the FIM Grand Prix World Championship Regulations, in the edition printed on 31 January 2026: a tie "will be decided on the basis of the number of best results in the Grand Prix races, counting the number of first places, then the number of second places, and so on until a result is obtained", and "for MotoGP, the Sprint results will not be taken into account for deciding a tie". Marquez leads on that count, and Saturday's Sprint, which he also won, adds nothing to it. Martin has to be ahead on points, not level.

The response is due at the Red Bull Ring on 20 September

Acosta's third place was his fifth podium of the campaign, taken on a KTM at a race whose top two were a factory Ducati and a Gresini one. Francesco Bagnaia crashed out of his own home Grand Prix and scored nothing.

Dorna's closing view of Aprilia is blunter than anything a rival said: "there's not a shadow of a doubt that a response from Aprilia is needed - fast." The next round is the Red Bull Ring on 20 September, and the championship arrives there with its top two level on points and separated only by the countback.