Misano revealed the central paradox of this MotoGP championship. Aprilia has the strongest motorcycle, yet Marc Marquez left the weekend with the clearest momentum in the title fight. The RS-GP had the performance to control the event, but Marco Bezzecchi’s crash turned a major opportunity into another recovery exercise for the Noale operation.

Marquez’s turnaround began with a substantial deficit. After May’s Italian Grand Prix, he was 102 points away from the championship lead. He had returned from surgery for a long-standing nerve problem connected to last year’s crash at the Indonesian Grand Prix, and his title challenge appeared effectively over. Across the seven races that followed, he won five grands prix and scored 203 of the 259 available points. Four of those victories came on weekends offering 37 points.

Jorge Martin scored 118 points in the same period and Bezzecchi 68. The sequence brought Marquez and Martin level on 274 points, with Marquez officially first because of his stronger results. That recovery is even more striking because his surgeon says the rider’s right shoulder is operating at roughly 50% of full capacity. The championship leader is therefore not the same physical and competitive version of the rider who won last year’s title.

The injury disclosure changed the pressure

After the Aragon Grand Prix, Marquez posted social-media images showing the damage around his right bicep. At Misano, he said that making the situation public helped him concentrate, relax and be open with everyone about what he could still give. The disclosure changed the context around the championship. His results now come alongside a serious physical limitation, while a possible title loss cannot simply be explained by a lack of speed from Marquez or Ducati.

That makes Aprilia’s task more difficult. Noale’s engineering department has produced an RS-GP described as the best motorcycle on the grid. Bezzecchi underlined that in qualifying with a sub-1m30s lap described as a track record. Martin could not get close to that effort on the soft tyre, while Raul Fernandez on the sole Trackhouse machine appeared to be operating in a different race.

Even Marquez had to reach the limit to challenge for pole. He told DAZN that he reached 65 degrees of lean and broke Ducati’s lean-angle record, but still missed pole by almost 0.2s. In the sprint he managed the fight better and gained the advantage on the brakes into Turn 1, as he had at Aragon. Bezzecchi’s second place was nevertheless his best sprint result of the season.

Bezzecchi’s crash reshaped the standings

On Sunday, Bezzecchi converted pole into the holeshot and looked ready to establish a gap. He ran slightly wide through the fast right-hand sequence before Turn 13 and touched the brakes while off-line. The crash, in front of his own grandstand, abruptly ended a race in which Aprilia had the pace to put Ducati under pressure.

It was Bezzecchi’s fifth Sunday non-score in the last seven rounds. Over the same period, Marquez recorded five wins and collected the maximum 25 points each time. Bezzecchi had started Misano 22 points from the championship lead and left 33 points behind Marquez and Martin. That is still a recoverable gap, but the problem is no longer purely mathematical.

The crash echoed incidents at Brno and the Dutch Grand Prix, where Aprilia had held a clear pace advantage over Ducati. Bezzecchi told the official MotoGP website that the season remains long, that he wants to return to his early-season form and that the fight is not over. How he responds at the next rounds will determine whether the deficit remains manageable psychologically as well as on the points table.

Aprilia must also manage uncertainty around Martin. His Misano race was affected by an unexpected arm-pump problem; the race analysis considered that he had the pace to win without it, and he may need surgery after Austria. Ai Ogura has been sidelined by injury since before the Aragon Grand Prix, removing a probable title contender from Aprilia’s campaign. Those absences do not reduce the RS-GP’s technical strength, but they limit the team’s ability to turn speed into championship points.

Austria is next. In theory, the RS-GP should remain competitive, while Michelin will bring a stiffer rear tyre carcass to the Red Bull Ring. Aprilia worked well with that solution early in the season, whereas Ducati struggled more with it in the opening two rounds, when Marquez was also dealing with greater fitness limitations.

Aprilia still owns the technical advantage. What engineering cannot remove is the pressure of fighting Marquez for a MotoGP title — pressure Bezzecchi and Martin have not previously faced. At Misano, the RS-GP had the speed. Marquez had the consistency and, after Bezzecchi’s crash, the momentum of the championship leader.