After a shaky start to his debut campaign with Aprilia, Marco Bezzecchi has now firmly established himself among the frontrunners in MotoGP 2025 — a fact underlined most emphatically by his performance at the San Marino Grand Prix.
Bezzecchi has faced Marc Marquez before, and while this was another defeat, it was different. For once, there were no built-in caveats — no bad track for Marquez like Barcelona or Assen, no tyre oddities like Silverstone — yet Bezzecchi still managed to go toe-to-toe with him until the finish.
Alex Marquez’s 1m31.576s on lap two stood as the best lap time among the other 21 riders in the field. But Marc went faster than that 11 times. Bezzecchi nearly matched him blow-for-blow, beating that benchmark 10 times.
At a circuit where Aprilia’s only previous podium came courtesy of Maverick Vinales in 2022, this kind of performance is a seismic shift. It positions Bezzecchi — and Aprilia — as perhaps the only semi-credible threat to Marquez’s reign before the regulations change in 2027.
Numbers That Tell the Story
- Laps led in 2025 (sprints and races)
- Marc Marquez – 309
- Alex Marquez – 106
- Marco Bezzecchi – 81
- Fabio Quartararo – 29
- Johann Zarco/Pecco Bagnaia – 19
- Top scorers since Silverstone
- Marc Marquez – 341
- Marco Bezzecchi – 191
- Alex Marquez – 181
- Pedro Acosta – 142
- Pecco Bagnaia – 117
Since his British Grand Prix turnaround, Bezzecchi’s average Sunday race finish is 3.6 — champion-caliber in some series, though not quite enough in modern MotoGP.
There have been hiccups, most notably at the Catalan Grand Prix, but the Bezzecchi–Aprilia package has never looked hopelessly outmatched.
Team’s Perspective
Aprilia racing boss Massimo Rivola put it bluntly:
“It is a fact that on those tracks where we normally were not competitive — like Austria, Misano, so the stop-and-go tracks — now we are competitive.
But it is also a fact that on the tracks where we used to be very competitive, like Barcelona, we don’t know if we still get that advantage or not. I’m curious to go to Indonesia, to Phillip Island, to see the speed on very fast corners. I think everyone is closer, closer and closer on average at those tracks.
The downside of that is, since the bike is quite different to before in mechanical set-up, electronic set-up, on Friday, particularly FP1, we are not immediately ready to get the best out of the bike. So we need a bit more time to get the best performance.
Normally the fastest performance of the Aprilia in the weekend is in the race. And that’s good for next year, obviously, but I’m very curious to go to the Asian races.”
The Harsh Reality
A “peaky” bike cannot beat Marquez. Ducati learned this lesson in 2016–2018, most painfully in that first year when Andrea Dovizioso’s spirited title challenge came undone with a 13th-place finish at Phillip Island — a mistake, but also an inevitable championship-killing points loss.
But Aprilia in 2025 is not heading into any weekend expecting to be blown away. That’s a monumental difference.
Of course, with nearly 300 points still separating Bezzecchi from Marquez, Aprilia’s new spearhead — or perhaps Jorge Martin, should he rise to the same level — will need a massive step forward.
It still feels almost impossible. But it’s now just marginally less impossible than for anyone else daring to dream of toppling Marc Marquez.
