Who is under pressure in MotoGP?

Pressure is one of those constants that exists to varying degrees in every walk of life. So while MotoGP riders and teams will have spent recent weeks trying to switch off during the summer break, some will have had more on their mind than others.

Whether it's a battle against a team-mate, arresting a slump in form, winning a development race or just the simple desire to improve, they head to the Red Bull Ring this weekend with nine grands prix left to shape their 2016 season.

JORGE LORENZO

The reigning world champion's struggles leading into the summer break are well documented. Put simply, he did not resemble the Lorenzo we know.

It's fair - rather than being an excuse - to attribute some of the Assen and Sachsenring woes to his history with those venues and the wet conditions, but perhaps Barcelona was more telling. Lorenzo led early on but went backwards, struggling with front-tyre graining until he was collected by Andrea Iannone.

He was largely alone in suffering front-tyre issues in that race, while Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi taught him a thing or two about rear tyres when their lack of grip and life was a factor at Jerez.

Forget fighting for a title, Lorenzo's main priority has to be working out how to be comfortable and therefore fast on these Michelin tyres, because they are not going anywhere.

The name Simon Crafar was mentioned recently in relation to Lorenzo's tyre struggles. The New Zealander won the 500cc British GP at Donington Park in 1998 on Dunlops, but the race there one year later was his last in the premier class, having struggled following his team's '99 shift to Michelin tyres.

You would back Lorenzo to work it out, but Crafar's fall is more than a cautionary tale.

HONDA

Marc Marquez leads the championship for Honda, but the fact that he's there is largely down to him.

The Spaniard was a class above in the first half of the season, showing amazing consistency in not just pace but also results as rivals have found trouble. As he said after taking his third win of the season at the Sachsenring, it's "completely the opposite to last year".

Marquez's new mental approach has paid off, he's riding as well as ever and leads the championship by 48 points.

He is carrying Honda, which was late to the control-electronics party, and did not have its overhauled engine - with a counter-rotating crank - properly sorted before it was sealed. Hondas have been tough to tame for a long time, but that's been masked by riders such as Marquez and Casey Stoner.

It's improved things a little this year, but is now firmly in the 2017 development window, one that it can't afford to squander in its bid to give Marquez - and team-mate Dani Pedrosa - a sharper toolkit to use.

ANDREA IANNONE

There is no denying that Iannone is a seriously fast motorcycle rider. But he has lived up to his self-styled nickname 'the Maniac' far too often this year.

Iannone could have become a grand prix winner already, and definitely should be higher up the championship table than eighth. But there's a growing catalogue of errors that basically add up to opportunities lost. Only at Jerez, where Ducati struggled with rear grip, has there not been some sort of incident that's shaped his weekend.

There was the Qatar crash; taking out team-mate Andrea Dovizioso at Termas de Rio Hondo, which gave him a grid penalty for Austin; at Le Mans he crashed in qualifying and the race; at Mugello he was slow off the front row; collecting Lorenzo at Barcelona sent him to the back of the Assen grid and he fell in that race; at the Sachsenring he crashed in qualifying.

The raw materials are there, both man and machine, and Iannone has discussed trying to understand his limit more. If he can do that, he has a strong chance to leave Ducati at the end of the season having ended its long run between wins, with his head held high.

VALENTINO ROSSI

It's hard to decide whether the first half of Rossi's 2016 has been good or bad. On one hand, he has been more competitive - especially in qualifying - than he was last year, when he nearly won the championship, outlining his title credentials with victories at Jerez and Barcelona.

But on the other, that's largely gone to waste, and the Italian starts the second half of the campaign 59 points behind Marquez. He can take no blame for the Mugello engine failure (particularly crushing as team-mate Lorenzo's expired in the warm-up rather than the race), but the falls at Austin and particularly Assen were costly.

As was the Sachsenring, both the delayed decision to pit going against his crew's pleas, and the joint, pre-race decision to go with intermediates rather than slicks for the run home.

To win the title from here would be a massive ask, so in a way the championship pressure is off. He's the outsider. But one more bad race will surely remove him from contention altogether.

Beyond that, Rossi will also have to shoulder the load when it comes to Yamaha's early development work for 2017. The Ducati-bound Lorenzo will not be involved when next year's parts start to arrive, likely from the post-Brno test, and Rossi will be the man leading the way, shaping the key calls.

DANI PEDROSA

The runaway success of Marquez highlights how hard Pedrosa found the going in the first half of 2016.

He inherited a podium at Termas de Rio Hondo when the Ducatis clashed, and even then only because Maverick Vinales also fell and Scott Redding's Pramac Ducati broke down. Things looked better at Mugello and Barcelona, where he jumped on a new frame, but he was still not quite on the same level as Marquez.

If the wet Assen race hadn't been red flagged, at least one rival suspected that Pedrosa would've won. But it was, and he had an off early in the second half.

Pedrosa has not been a happy man this year. He was tipped to benefit from the style required for Michelin tyres, but suffered particularly when the rear-tyre construction was stiffened after the Argentina race. He was also hampered by his diminutive frame, making it harder to get weight over the rear tyre to generate heat and grip.

Yes, Honda has made development decisions based on the feedback of Marquez, and some of those do not suit Pedrosa. But having signed on to stay for the 2017 and '18 seasons, as Marquez's team-mate, he has to find something to get on closer terms with his countryman, or settle in for a long two-and-a-half years playing a distant second fiddle.

ANDREA DOVIZIOSO

When it started to look like Ducati would be able to lure Lorenzo, Dovizioso was viewed as the rider most likely to be squeezed out. The opinion was that the younger and - on raw pace - quicker Iannone would get the nod to stay.

Then Iannone found some of the mischief outlined above, the key moment being costing Ducati a double podium at Termas de Rio Hondo. Dovizioso was also taken out at Austin a week later, by Pedrosa, then had water leaking onto his rear tyre at Jerez.

The early part of the season did not go his way, and while Iannone has still, on the whole, been the quicker of the pair, Dovizioso has found some of his own trouble since. He was among the crashers at Le Mans as front tyres proved tricky, and could've won both wet races if not for a fall at Assen and staying out too long before swapping bikes at the Sachsenring.

The battle between the Ducati pair to try to win before the end of the season will be one of the more interesting subplots. As the man staying to work with big-dollar-recruit Lorenzo, Dovizioso will want to get results on the board to show he's not going to settle into any sort of #2 role, perceived or otherwise, in 2017.

MICHELIN

Being a control tyre supplier is surely the most poisoned of all of motorsport's chalices. Sure, you can do nice marketing things like put up trackside signage, entertain guests, generate 'return on investment' and learn for your road products, but people only really talk about you when things are going wrong.

And things have gone wrong at times in Michelin's first year back. It deserves credit for developing tyres that were barely discussed but quicker than 2015's Bridgestones in the Qatar season opener. But the rear-tyre dramas in Argentina were an eye-opener, to which Michelin reacted with impressive speed and intent, getting a new batch to America to run the following weekend.

Fronts remain a point of contention, with riders - who love the rear tyres - regularly discussing the lack of warning they offer before you hit the deck. And the wets need some work, the fronts having been too hard at Assen, which was cited as a factor in most of the crashes in that race. That was the first time they were really used, so development from a 'point zero' will always follow.

Michelin's response to each of those problems has been impressive. It has routinely arrived with further-developed rubber, and all going to plan we won't be talking about the French firm much between now and November.

APRILIA

Life in MotoGP is not easy for a new manufacturer, especially if your first proper bike only turns a wheel for the first time five weeks before its race debut against proven rivals.

Delays during the development of Aprilia's RS-GP mean 2016 was always going to be tough, having run a production-derived 'lab' bike last year. Learning is clearly and correctly the focus, and Suzuki's '16 form has shown what's achievable in year two of the programme, if you get it right.

But progress has been hard to come by for the Gresini-run Aprilia programme. Little signs have emerged, such as Alvaro Bautista narrowly missing out on Q2 at Jerez, finishing eighth at Barcelona and then being on for sixth at Assen before crashing on the last lap.

But Aprilia is 19 points behind where Suzuki was this time last year, and the consensus from Bautista and Stefan Bradl is that a lot of what's been brought to the bike this year has not been delivering tangible improvements, on a package that's overweight and lacking power.

It'll keep on chipping away, but will surely head to Valencia feeling a little nervous.

KTM will be there, racing with Mika Kallio as a wildcard, before entering the championship full-time next year. Kallio was more-than-respectable in the recent Red Bull Ring test, in which Aprilia did not run timing transponders.

Could the Austrian manufacturer outpace Aprilia at Valencia on its debut and claim an early scalp?

BRADLEY SMITH

Before Lorenzo's slump started, you would have said Bradley Smith was the rider hardest hit by this year's switch from Bridgestone to Michelin tyres.

The Tech3 Yamaha man was clearly the top satellite rider last year - sixth in the championship, having scored points in every grand prix. Smith heads to the Red Bull Ring 16th in this year's standings, having been the top satellite rider in just one of nine races.

By comparison, team-mate Pol Espargaro has excelled. He sits sixth in the points, having led the way for satellite teams in four races.

Smith and his crew were lost early on with the Michelin tyres. It was so bad that Smith set off on a whole new direction during the Austin weekend, making set-up changes by centimetres rather than millimetres.

Progress has been made and Smith's form has improved somewhat since then, but Espargaro is still ahead 7-2 in qualifying, and Smith is not hitting the heights of recent years.

The bad news if that record continues? While he's off to KTM next year, so is Espargaro...