Marc Marquez: Aprilia MotoGP dominance “not any surprise”

Marc Marquez insists Aprilia’s dominant start to the 2026 MotoGP season has come as no surprise.

After years of Ducati control, the opening three rounds have seen the balance of power shift towards the Noale manufacturer.

Marco Bezzecchi has won all three grands prix, with team-mate Jorge Martin becoming an RS-GP Sprint winner alongside a pair of GP podiums to hold second in the world championship standings.

Pedro Acosta is third with a debut Sprint win for KTM, with VR46’s Fabio di Giannantonio the top Ducati rider in fourth.

Marquez, the reigning world champion, is fifth overall and still chasing his first grand prix podium of the season, with his only win coming in the Goiania Sprint.

Although Bezzecchi and Aprilia also ruled the final grands prix of last season, many felt things would have been different without Marquez’s injury absence.

However, Marquez insists he always saw last year’s Aprilia form, subsequently backed up by pre-season testing, as genuine.

“Biggest surprise? I mean, for me it was not any surprise,” Marc Marquez told MotoGP.com.

“Already I the last part of last season and the pre-season we understood that, for example, Marco was very fast, and that Aprilia was fast, and was improving.”

That “no surprises” stance was also echoed by HRC’s Luca Marini.

“More or less everything went the same as the pre-season tests,” explained the Italian. “We saw all the manufacturers improve a lot, especially Aprilia.

“We [Honda] are really focused on our plan and trying to understand in this initial part of the season how many updates we can have, and then we will see our potential throughout the season.”

Others took a different view, including fellow Honda rider and MotoGP rookie Diogo Moreira, who picked out Bezzecchi, Martin and Aprilia as his biggest surprise.

“I would say Bezzecchi. At the end of last year he was already there, but this year he was super strong. And also Martin,” Moreira said.

“I would say, Aprilia in general made a very good job this winter, so they are super strong now. For me, the best combination now is official Aprilia.”

Martin, who missed part of pre-season testing due to rehabilitation from winter surgery, insisted he didn’t expect to be so strong.

“To be on the podium after two rounds was already quite surprising,” said Martin, who repeated the Goiania double rostrum feat at COTA.

VR46’s Franco Morbidelli took an ‘expect the unexpected’ view.

“MotoGP is full of surprises, and it's really difficult to point to just one. That's the beauty of it,” he said.