Alex Márquez wins as Aprilia leaves Jerez with the bigger statement

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Round Four – Jerez

A huge hillside crowd at Jerez is illuminated by thousands of phone lights before dawn.

Alex finds his Jerez magic again as Marc crashes out early

Alex Márquez left Jerez with the winner’s trophy, the fastest lap of the race and another reminder that this is still one of his magic tracks. Starting fifth, he was in second almost immediately, took the lead from his brother at Turn 6, then controlled the 25-lap Grand Prix with the sort of authority that had been missing from his season until Spain. He took the chequered flag two seconds clear of championship leader Marco Bezzecchi, with Fabio Di Giannantonio another 3.893s back in third. Marc crashed out on lap two at Turn 11, while Francesco Bagnaia retired halfway through a disastrous Sunday for Ducati Lenovo.

The full MotoGP field bunches up under braking into Turn 1 at Jerez at the race start.

The race turned early and brutally. Marc Márquez made the holeshot from pole, Bezzecchi launched far better than he had in the Sprint to jump to second, and Alex immediately inserted himself into the fight. He first shoved past Bezzecchi at Turn 9, then attacked Marc at the Dani Pedrosa corner. One lap later, Marc’s front folded at the fast right of Turn 11 and the defending champion was gone. Marc’s was the only MotoGP crash recorded in the Grand Prix.

Alex Marquez leads Marco Bezzecchi with a gap opening between them during the MotoGP race at Jerez.

From there, Alex did exactly what winning riders do at Jerez when they know they have the pace. He broke the race before anyone else could settle into it. His best lap, a 1m37.081s on lap two, was the fastest of the race and also improved his own best-race-lap mark at Jerez. The 110.575 km Grand Prix distance was completed nearly eight seconds faster than last year, despite the mixed weather that had shaped the weekend. His own summary was telling: “If there was a track where I could rediscover my feeling, it was Jerez. Magic happens here.” That was the ride in a sentence.

Alex Marquez rides alone at the front of the field on the BK8 Gresini Ducati with a large gap behind at Jerez.

And yet, even with Alex winning on a Ducati, the bigger competitive takeaway from Sunday is that Aprilia now looks like the most complete package in MotoGP. Bezzecchi was second, Jorge Martín came from tenth on the grid to fourth, Ai Ogura was fifth, and Raúl Fernández worked his way up to sixth. That made it four Aprilias in the top six, the second time already this year that Aprilia has put four bikes that high on a Sunday, and it reinforced what the broader standings now say: Aprilia leads the constructor table on 125 points to Ducati’s 106, while Aprilia Racing heads the team standings on 191 points and Trackhouse is second on 102. In other words, this is no longer a one-rider or one-team surge. It is systemic.

Marco Bezzecchi and the Aprilia Racing team pose together in pit lane after finishing second at Jerez.

Bezzecchi’s afternoon said plenty about that. His five-race Sunday winning streak is over, and his extraordinary run of 121 consecutive laps led in Grands Prix has ended, too, but second place still felt like the ride of a championship leader. He never quite had Alex’s final edge, yet he absorbed the defeat without letting the weekend unravel after yet another difficult Saturday for the 27-year-old Italian, and six straight GP podiums is the kind of sequence titles are built on. Bezz now leads the championship on 101 points, 11 ahead of Martín, with Di Giannantonio up to third on 71.

Alex Marquez leans the BK8 Gresini Ducati into a right-hand corner with his elbow near the ground at Jerez.

That, perhaps, is where the Ducati story now becomes more complicated. Ducati, the brand, finally ended its five-race GP winless stretch thanks to Alex Márquez, but the factory team itself had another miserable Sunday. Marc crashed, Bagnaia retired, and Ducati Lenovo has now gone nine Grands Prix in a row without a Sunday podium, its longest such drought since the run from Aragón 2012 to Qatar 2014.

The irony is sharp: Ducati still has riders fast enough to win, but right now it is the satellite structure carrying the load. Alex wins for Gresini, Di Giannantonio climbs onto another podium for VR46, while the red bikes in the factory box continue to look oddly vulnerable on Sundays. It is increasingly clear that Marc’s arm is still very much dulling his potential, although the man himself put Sunday’s misfortune down to his own mistake.

Alex Marquez stands on the top step of the Jerez MotoGP podium with Marco Bezzecchi second and Fabio Di Giannantonio third.

Di Giannantonio admitted a small mistake at the start cost him a cleaner shot at the win, and that feels credible given how strong he had looked all weekend in both one-lap pace and longer-run rhythm. He finished third, moved to third in the championship, and increasingly looks like the rider Ducati cannot afford to ignore.

Marco Bezzecchi on the Aprilia leads Fabio Di Giannantonio and Jorge Martin through a Jerez corner during the race.

Elsewhere, Martín’s fourth place was a serious result, even if it will not grab the same headlines. He was aggressive off the line, ran in the podium fight for the first half of the race and gave Aprilia another data point for the argument that its current RS-GP is the reference machine. Ogura and Fernández then finished the job for Trackhouse, with Ogura pinching fifth from his team-mate on the last lap.

Alex Marquez smiles and embraces family members in parc ferme after winning the Spanish Grand Prix.

Zarco continued Honda’s quietly encouraging European opening in seventh, Bastianini was the best KTM in eighth, Aldeguer’s recovery continued in ninth, and Acosta’s race went sour after contact with Fernández damaged his front-end aero and knocked him back into a fight he never escaped.

Alex Marquez kneels in the gravel with his head in his hands as the packed Jerez hillside crowd celebrates behind him.

Yamaha, meanwhile, remained well short of the front, with Quartararo 14th, Rins 16th, Miller 18th and Toprak Razgatlioglu 19th. Quartararo set Yamaha’s best race lap at 1m38.380, with Miller close behind on 1m38.389 and Rins on 1m38.408, while Toprak’s best was 1m39.050 and Augusto Fernandez’s 1m39.846. That underlined how far back the M1 was on outright Sunday pace, with the first four finishers all recording fastest laps more than a second quicker than Yamaha’s benchmark.

Alex Marquez poses with the number one board and the Gresini team in parc ferme after winning the race.

The rain made the Saturday Sprint quite dramatic; the dry Grand Prix made the grid easier to read. Alex Márquez had the best package-and-rider combination on the day, but Aprilia had the best brand story across the field. That is the distinction Jerez sharpened.

Marco Bezzecchi smiles with his podium trophy after finishing second in the Spanish Grand Prix.

If Aprilia left Sunday looking like the benchmark, Monday now becomes the first real chance for everyone else to hit back. Jerez hosts the first official in-season MotoGP test on Monday, before attention quickly shifts toward 2027 as Aprilia prepares to roll out its 850cc prototype later in the week. Pirelli has already distributed a second batch of 2027 development tyres to the manufacturers, and with all five factories now deep into 850 testing, Jerez feels less like the end of one weekend than the start of MotoGP’s next technical phase.

Jerez MotoGP Race Results


Pos	Rider	Bike	Time/Gap
1	A. Marquez	Duc	40m48.861
2	M. Bezzecchi	Apr	+1.903
3	F. Di Giannantonio	Duc	+5.796
4	J. Martin	Apr	+9.229
5	A. Ogura	Apr	+9.891
6	R. Fernandez	Apr	+10.614
7	J. Zarco	Hon	+13.039
8	E. Bastianini	KTM	+14.411
9	F. Aldeguer	Duc	+19.778
10	P. Acosta	KTM	+22.431
11	B. Binder	KTM	+22.799
12	F. Morbidelli	Duc	+24.867
13	L. Marini	Hon	+26.871
14	F. Quartararo	Yam	+29.532
15	J. Mir	Hon	+29.899
16	A. Rins	Yam	+32.921
17	D. Moreira	Hon	+36.656
18	J. Miller	Yam	+37.577
19	T. Razgatlioglu	Yam	+44.557
20	A. Fernandez	Yam	+1:05.023
Not Classified
NC	F. Bagnaia	Duc	13 Laps
NC	L. Savadori	Apr	19 Laps
NC	M. Marquez	Duc	24 Laps

Jerez MotoGP Top Speeds


Pos	Rider	Bike	Average	Top
1	F. Di Giannantonio	Duc	298.0Km/h	300.8Km/h
2	P. Acosta	KTM	298.0Km/h	300.0Km/h
3	F. Bagnaia	Duc	298.9Km/h	300.0Km/h
4	M. Bezzecchi	Apr	298.2Km/h	300.0Km/h
5	L. Marini	Hon	298.0Km/h	299.1Km/h
6	D. Moreira	Hon	297.3Km/h	299.1Km/h
7	E. Bastianini	KTM	298.1Km/h	299.1Km/h
8	J. Zarco	Hon	297.3Km/h	298.3Km/h
9	F. Morbidelli	Duc	296.0Km/h	298.3Km/h
10	B. Binder	KTM	296.9Km/h	298.3Km/h
11	F. Quartararo	Yam	294.2Km/h	297.5Km/h
12	R. Fernandez	Apr	296.1Km/h	297.5Km/h
13	A. Rins	Yam	296.8Km/h	297.5Km/h
14	A. Ogura	Apr	296.7Km/h	297.5Km/h
15	L. Savadori	Apr	294.9Km/h	296.7Km/h
16	J. Mir	Hon	296.1Km/h	296.7Km/h
17	F. Aldeguer	Duc	296.1Km/h	296.7Km/h
18	J. Martin	Apr	296.1Km/h	296.7Km/h
19	J. Miller	Yam	293.9Km/h	295.8Km/h
20	A. Marquez	Duc	295.2Km/h	295.8Km/h
21	T. Razgatlioglu	Yam	291.7Km/h	293.4Km/h
22	A. Fernandez	Yam	292.2Km/h	292.6Km/h

2026 MotoGP Championship Standings


Pos	Rider	Points
1	M. Bezzecchi	101
2	J. Martin	90
3	F. Di Giannantonio	71
4	P. Acosta	66
5	M. Marquez	57
6	R. Fernandez	54
7	A. Marquez	53
8	A. Ogura	48
9	F. Bagnaia	34
10	E. Bastianini	30
11	B. Binder	28
12	L. Marini	27
13	F. Morbidelli	25
14	J. Zarco	24
15	F. Aldeguer	20
16	F. Quartararo	11
17	D. Moreira	9
18	J. Mir	4
19	A. Rins	3
20	T. Razgatlioglu	1
21	J. Miller
22	M. Viñales
23	M. Pirro
24	A. Fernandez

2026 MotoGP Calendar


Rnd	Date	Event	Circuit
1	01 Mar	Thai	Chang International Circuit
2	22 Mar	Brazil*	Autodromo Internacional Ayrton Senna
3	29 Mar	US	Circuit of the Americas
4	26 Apr	Spain**	Circuito de Jerez-Angel Nieto
5	10 May	France	Le Mans
6	17 May	Catalonia	Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya
7	31 May	Italy	Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello
8	07 Jun	Hungary	Balaton Park Circuit
9	21 Jun	Czech	Automotodrom Brno
10	28 Jun	Netherlands	TT Circuit Assen
11	12 Jul	Germany	Sachsenring
12	09 Aug	GB	Silverstone Circuit
13	30 Aug	Aragon	MotorLand Aragon
14	13 Sep	San Marino	Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli
15	20 Sep	Austria	Red Bull Ring-Spielberg
16	04 Oct	Japan	Mobility Resort Motegi
17	11 Oct	Indonesia	Pertamina Mandalika International Circuit
18	25 Oct	Australia	Phillip Island
19	01 Nov	Malaysia	Petronas Sepang International Circuit
20	08 Nov	Qatar	Lusail International Circuit
21	22 Nov	Portugal	Autodromo Internacional do Algarve
22	29 Nov	Valencia	Circuit Ricardo Tormo