The last leg of the 2026 MotoGP season is here, and the stakes are only getting higher. Aprilia Racing rider Marco Bezzecchi, currently P3 in the world championship, won the Indonesian GP at the Mandalika International Circuit (133 days after his last win in the Italian GP), and Jorge Martin, who currently leads the standings, took P3. Raul Fernandez and Ai Ogura of the Superfile Trackhouse MotoGP team ranked P2 and P4, resulting in an Aprilia 1-2-3-4 for the first time in the history of the premier class.
- Marco Bezzecchi wins for the first time since the dominant Italian GP victory
- Martin and Marquez are separated by 2 points, same as after Motegi the previous week
- Maximo Qaximo Quiles wins Moto3 championship
- Izan Guevara continues to chip away at Manu Gonzalez’s lead in Moto2
Marc Marquez started off strong with Sprint win
Aided by Raul and Marco’s crash
Going into the weekend, Aprilia was expected to be the better performer and that largely held true throughout the practice sessions. However, during Saturday’s sprint, Marco Bezzecchi’s momentary lapse in judgement resulted in him and Raul Fernandez crashing out in the very first corner of the first lap. This gave the lead to Jorge Martin (started in P5), who held on to it until lap 9, when a front tyre pressure warning forced him to slow down and let the trailing rider, Marc Marquez, overtake him. Marc then started building a gap between the two of them, and while Martin sorted out his issues and started catching up to Marc, he ran wide on the last lap, thereby falling out of the podium positions, with a final P4 result.
Pedro Acosta was actively in the battle for the podium with Fabio DiGiannantonio and Ai Ogura, until he received a long lap penalty for track limits and ended the Sprint with P6, behind Alex Marquez. A series of technical issues and the early crash guided Marc to a Sprint win, making him the outright championship leader on Saturday by 4 points, with Fabio and Ogura finishing in P2 and P3, respectively. Fernandez ended up with a broken index finger as a result of the crash but was cleared to race on Sunday.
An eventful Grand Prix, dominated by Aprilias
An injury-stricken Raul Fernandez showed admirable resilience
The Sunday race, though, went just as expected. Fernandez started from pole position and had to modify his riding technique to brake with his middle finger, owing to his broken index finger. He was quick to race away from the rest of the pack, with Marco closely following for 17 out of the 27 laps, where he finally overtook him on turn 1 and won the race eventually. In addition to winning, Bezzecchi also set the fastest lap of the race at 1:29:660 and finished the race 21.060 seconds quicker compared to 2025.
Marc Marquez – rejuvenated by his Sprint victory – started strong in P3 but was subsequently overtaken by Jorge Martin and then Pedro Acosta later in the race. Marc and Pedro had a back-and-forth for some laps, where they both faced apparent front tyre pressure warnings (similar to Martin on Saturday), so they let each other pass a few times to let their tyres recover. Once Pedro resolved the issue, he overtook Marc but was then overtaken by Ogura. The race ended with Martin in P3, Ogura in P4, Pedro in P5 and Marc in P6.
DiGiannantonio had a good race start at P3 but was quickly overtaken by all the riders above as well as Alex Marquez, ending his race in P8. Pedro was once again the best-performing KTM rider, after Enea Bastianini outperformed him in Motegi. Enea ended his Mandalika run with P10, followed by Pedro’s teammate Brad Binder in P11.
After his win in the Japanese GP, Marc Marquez had reduced the points gap to leader Jorge Martin to 2, and he briefly led the championship after his Sprint win. However, the race results have brought the duo back to the same gap, with Jorge Martin once again becoming the leader, followed by Marc Marquez, with a two-point deficit going to Phillip Island, Australia.
Hot track, hotter riders, notable crashes
Four DNFs and one DNS
The Indonesian GP, hosted on Lombok Island, is considered a trying track for riders as well as their motorcycles. During the MotoGP race, the track temperature was a scalding 62 degC, and the air temperature was around 29deg C with 73 percent humidity. The conditions remained similarly scorching throughout the weekend, and evidently, it was a tough environment to race in. Fermin Aldeguer, last year’s Indonesian GP winner, crashed out at the end of lap 1, followed by Jack Miller and Pecco Bagnaia – separate incidents – on lap 5. Toprak Razgatlioglu retired on lap 8 due to weakness and lack of feeling in his right shoulder following a massive highside on Saturday practice, as he explained in post-race interviews.
Honda had announced that Aleix Espargaro would replace Joan Mir for the weekend, and Espargaro took part in all the practice sessions and the Sprint. However, he withdrew from the Grand Prix, citing arm pump issues and choosing to focus on Honda’s 850cc tests in Sepang next week.
Maximo Quiles takes Moto3 championship
A chaos-filled Moto2 race with a closer championship fight than MotoGP
The other two races were just as eventful and perhaps more chaotic than MotoGP. After an impressive 2026 campaign, Maximo Quiles of the CFMoto Gaviota Aspar team became the Moto3 World Champion with five races remaining. Quiles has the second-best win rate of 58.8 percent, trailing only David Alonso’s dominant run of 2024, with a 70 percent win rate.
Speaking of David Alonso, his Moto2 race came to a sadly premature end. Alonso started as P2 in the race, but in the first turn of the first lap, his CFMoto Power Electronics Aspar teammate Dani Holgado crashed into him, leading to Alonso’s bike getting severely damaged. The crash also took out Joe Roberts and Collin Veijer, which brought red flags out and resulted in a race restart with a reduced 14 laps (versus planned 22 laps). Except for Alonso, the other three riders were able to restart the race, although Joe Roberts quickly retired because of an issue with his rear brake.
Klint Racing’s Alex Escrig was quick to overtake Izan Guevara and held on to the lead successfully, until a technical issue with his bike made him drop out of the race with two laps to go, handing Izan the victory. The final race results saw Izan Guevara in P1, current riders’ championship leader Manu Gonzalez in P2 and Dani Holgado in P3. With his hat-trick race win, Izan has reduced the points gap to Manu to 6.5, going to Phillip Island in two weeks’ time.
Unnatee Gidithuri
Saptarshi Mondal
