How Aprilia is winning the moral battle with Martin after British GP triumph

When Jorge Martin first got injured at the Sepang test in early February, his new employer Aprilia wished him a speedy recovery and got on with making the best of testing. Marco Bezzecchi, the one intact race rider still on the books, followed suit.

When Martin’s subsequent training crash meant he wouldn’t be around to start the season, Aprilia once again told its newly signed world champion to get well soon. And it dutifully went back to work on the RS-GP25 with Bezzecchi – also a new signing for the 2025 campaign.

When Martin finally returned to action at the Qatar Grand Prix, Aprilia welcomed him back and rolled up its sleeves with enthusiasm. After the rocky start, it seemed the season could really get going. At last, a full staff of race riders!

But then Martin suffered a freak accident during the race on Sunday night. He ended up spending several days in a Doha hospital before he could return home. It soon became clear that he was going to miss several more championship rounds. Aprilia and Bezzecchi no doubt swore and sighed at this latest setback – but then they returned to the task of honing the bike. Still not easy, given Bezzecchi had little experience of leading development.

Just after the French GP, when Autosport revealed the news that Martin was looking to get out of his two-year contract on a performance-based technicality that had lost all meaning for a rider who had barely ridden, public opinion certainly wasn’t on the Spaniard’s side.

The team was rocked by the news. Bezzecchi must have wondered what in the world was going on. CEO Massimo Rivola was furious. But they said nothing in public and focused on the business of nurturing the RS-GP25 to competitiveness.

Behind the scenes, Bezzecchi was also slipping into the role of team leader while Martin appeared to have lost faith in the company. That did not escape Rivola’s attention.

“Marco gives everything he has,” said the Italian. “All the time he [has] goes into the bike. After Le Mans, he sent us a video message to distribute to the whole company to say, ‘Guys, I believe in the project, keep pushing.’”

Bezzecchi embraced by Aprilia boss Rivola after his British GP win

Photo by: Aprilia Racing

With a barrage of questions on the Martin affair looming at the British GP, Aprilia took the initiative and issued a statement last Thursday morning. It was brief and uncompromising: Martin was a contracted Aprilia rider until the end of 2027. Then it got back to work.

Bezzecchi did not need to comment on the matter and duly refused to be drawn. Rather than allow himself to be distracted, he stuck to diplomacy. After all, he had an important opportunity to pursue at the British GP.

Silverstone is a special track for Aprilia. The marque got its first podium of the MotoGP era there with Aleix Espargaro in 2021. Maverick Vinales repeated the feat a year later, before Espargaro scored Aprilia’s second grand prix win there in 2023. Espargaro also took pole and fastest lap there in Ducati-dominated 2024. It’s a track that suits what has traditionally been an agile bike.

Then came Bezzecchi’s charge through the field after a bad start in the sprint. This was enough to make canny betting folk look up his odds for Sunday. His rise from 19th to fourth in a mere 10 laps looked like a perfect cocktail

On top of Aprilia’s strong history at Silverstone, the English track beckoned for other reasons. Stability under braking had been Bezzecchi’s major complaint in recent rounds, but that would be less of a factor at a venue where big stops aren’t a definitive factor. And Marco’s 2025 tendency to qualify too far back before getting progressively stronger in races was a good match for a ‘tyre wear track’ on which overtaking was not only possible but probable.

Despite the positive signs, Aprilia and Bezzecchi did not come to Silverstone with the form previous Aprilia packages had. To say that the team was targeting a victory would be to draw too deep from the well of hindsight. It was hoping to build on an improved performance at Le Mans with an encouraging result at a circuit that boded well, that’s all.

That said, it’s too simple to proclaim Bezzecchi’s win on Sunday the result of favourable conditions and a lucky tyre gamble. And it would be absolutely unfair. The Aprilia/Bezzecchi package looked a dark horse, perhaps a cheeky bet for a podium, from the very first session on Friday.

The bike’s speed-trap performance along the crucial Hangar Straight was in Ducati GP25 territory. Bezzecchi’s pace on race tyres turned heads. And he breezed directly into Q2.

The Aprilia rider looked back to his Bez...

Photo by: MotoGP

If Friday was strong, 11th-fastest time in qualifying on Saturday rather masked the potential. Bezzecchi was third-fastest through the quick sweeps of sector three in qualifying, for example, but was way down in sectors where he’d done well on Friday. Much like his season of late, he just hadn’t strung it all together yet.

Then came Bezzecchi’s charge through the field after a bad start in the sprint. This was enough to make canny betting folk look up his odds for Sunday. His rise from 19th to fourth in a mere 10 laps looked like a perfect cocktail. It was more than just a case of watching his tyres as others ran out of rubber – he set the fourth-fastest lap of the race to fully justify his position.

That gave him the confidence to pick the soft tyre for the grand prix. He negotiated the start much better this time around, then quickly moved up into second place – casually dispensing with others on the same rubber, including Johann Zarco and Jack Miller. Only Fabio Quartararo had the beating of Bezzecchi on the same tyre.

But then, when it looked like he was finally going to convert pole into a virtuoso win that transcended every obstacle thrown at him, Fabio’s bike left him wailing at the side of the track. It was drama and emotion fit for Hollywood.

That Bezzecchi, representing the slighted and smarting little team from Noale, was the man to benefit looked like a worthy plot twist. If it really had been scripted, this was an outcome to justify Quartararo meeting the fate he did. But neat though the story looked, it was not a complete surprise in the context of the weekend.

For the casual fan looking at the bigger picture, however, this simply goes down as a shock win with a juicy backdrop: a magnificent and meaningful piece of theatre in the context of the Martin saga.

Was the whole thing planned in minute detail in the Aprilia war room, all with the express intention of showing that renegade Martin a thing or two? Obviously not!

Bezzecchi laps up the celebrations with his Aprilia team

Photo by: MotoGP

But could Aprilia have produced a better-timed, more emphatic reply to Jorge if it had tried? The very race after the whole messy affair came out in public? Heck no! And does this win make a guy invoking a performance clause to get out of a job he’s barely started look even less reasonable than he did a week ago? It most certainly does.

The dignity shown by Aprilia in its statements after the win makes it look all the more angelic under the circumstances. Rivola simply underlined that the bike was a winner, and that it could be a winner for Jorge too. He was publicly conciliatory, willing to write off the whole messy contract business as the result of too much time mulling months of misfortune in hospital beds.

Bezzecchi, meanwhile, only just stopped short of confirming Martin as the “number one rider” at the team in his victory press conference. His message, too, appeared to be “no grudges”.

While we don’t know what is being said behind the scenes, on the surface these words must have had Martin squirming uncomfortably on his sofa. With the facts we have at our disposal, Aprilia is comfortably on the right side of the moral line in this struggle.

"I hope this is also a sign that will show Jorge that, when he returns, he’ll find a bike ready to battle for the important positions" Massimo Rivola

To put it another way, saying the nicest possible things and letting their work do the talking have left Aprilia and Bezzecchi smelling of roses after that work translated into a first grand prix win in over a year.

Maybe it was just pure luck that one of the marque’s best tracks came along directly after the Martin story broke. As Rivola was happy to admit “it’s true that we’re normally quite competitive at Silverstone, and one swallow does not make a summer” after the race.

But, if you’re of a romantic bent, it’s hard not to ascribe some sort of special significance to the cards falling the way they did. Rivola certainly hopes Martin might be so inclined: “I hope this is also a sign that will show Jorge that, when he returns, he’ll find a bike ready to battle for the important positions.”

Is that “when” from the Aprilia boss a little on the optimistic side, fed by the euphoria of victory? Or will Martin swallow his pride and accept it’s not too late to salvage his reputation?

Will Martin make amends with Aprilia?

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images