“Uh-oh.”
Welcome back to another edition of Dre’s Race Review, and this time, it’s in triplicate. We’ve got three of these bad boys coming out over the next couple of days, and this time around, we’re starting with MotoGP for Round 6 of their World Championship in Balaton Park, Hungary. And with it, for lack of a term… Marc Marquez is back.
Times 100
There’s a stat that’s lived rent free in my head since the Italian Grand Prix a fortnight or so ago. It came from Mat Oxley, one of Motorsport’s finest journalists and broadcasters. It refers to Marc Marquez, who wrote a biography on the man last year. It was this:
“This is the eighth injury comeback for Marc Marquez, since April 2021.”
It’s almost like battling injury has become the story of the second half of Marquez’s career.
- The original comeback from the broken arm in 2020
- A training crash that caused dipalopa (double vision)
- The recurrence of it after a hellacious highside in Indonesia
- A fourth surgery on the arm after the discovery his humerus had rotated 32 degrees
- Breaking his finger in a crash with Miguel Oliveira in Portimao
- Fracturing his thumb after six crashes in Germany, then breaking a rib a race later
- Repairing his shoulder after being hit by Marco Bezzecchi in Indonesia
- Coming back after another surgery to fix the screws in his 2019 shoulder injury, and breaking a metatarsal in his foot
Marc has quickly become the old Dani Pedrosa meme that runs off all his injuries. By the time we saw him upside down and flying through the air at Le Mans when he put a wheel on the paint and crashed in the Sprint, there were genuinely valid questions about his future, his longevity, and asking, is this worth it. Eight surgeries on his right arm and shoulder in half a decade. Double vision. A boat load of scarring, trauma, wear and tear in Year 14 of his top flight career and a man who’s not as bouncy as he was when he debuted at 20. The multi-million dollar question when he returned at Mugello last week was… just what will this Marquez be? Finishing seventh there but 11 seconds off the win was more relieving than anything else. There were more question marks about why they sent Marquez back out on one of the most physically demanding clockwise tracks on the calendar.
By the end of Balaton Park, it all clicked as to why. Marquez still thinks he can win this Championship.
It’s classic Marquez. Ala Doctor Who, Rule #1: The Doctor lies. He came into Hungary claiming that he wasn’t feeling great, he was taking a “Diesel Day” to limp into Q2 quietly. He was constantly downplaying his speed and situation. Marquez is a shrewd media customer, who has a great knack of talking out of both sides of his mouth. On one hand, he’ll downplay his health and fitness and say he’s nursing things, and I’m sure there’s an element of truth in that. But you don’t run the gauntlet of Mugello without thinking of the pros of landing at Balaton, a track he dominated last year with extra running under his belt. And Marquez pulled MotoGP’s pants down this weekend.
He took pole position. He busted out a two second lead in five laps on Pedro Acosta during the Sprint race. Acosta was looking like this finally going to be the weekend he gets his first win, he was comfortably quicker than everyone else in the field, bar Marquez, and he got molly-whopped by Marquez getting his tyres up to speed and being gone before Acosta could get going. “Supersport Mode”, Marquez claimed. Ha.
The race was hard work, but you’d never have been able to guess that Marquez had a 60% right arm if you didn’t know going in. Acosta got Marquez early, the latter having the clear strategy of being the only top runner on the soft rear tyre, getting the lead early and trying to pull away. Marquez was passed by Acosta early on, but he held his ground and clawed Acosta back. It was an intense fight for the lead at the middle distance, but once Acosta had his first dip in grip at half distance, Marquez finally took the lead, pushed the gap out to two seconds and Acosta couldn’t maintain his pace.
It was a heated, but controlled exhibition of what Marquez was still capable of doing. He looked like Marc again. Mostly. He’s still not where he wants to be. Balaton was always going to be easier for him given it’s an anti-clockwise track, where Marquez has an insane 55% winning record. Even before the arm injuries, Marquez always preferred going left due to his dirt track training. But even then, the arm still isn’t where Marquez wants it to be in terms of stamina, and he’s having to change his riding position to compensate. His brother Alex joked with him that he looked like Norick Abe in Hungary due to how upright his head was on right-handers.
But all of a sudden, this Championship isn’t over. Ducati just dominated Balaton again, with Aprilia looking human, struggling with the track’s more stop-start nature. Marquez is now only 72 points off the Championship lead, down from 102. We still have 13 weekends left, so Marquez only needs to claw back six points a weekend to get to the top. Aprilia’s about to face its greatest test yet – Can it stop Marquez if the latter gets back to anything near his best?
I’m sure it can do a great job handling the press-
Aprilia Cracks Again
Oh, Jorge. What are we going to do with you? Balaton gave plenty of warning about what could happen. Last year, Fabio Quartararo got his braking wrong into Turn 1, and caused a crash when he hit Enea Bastianini. Since then, Balaton has had the opening corner sequence resurfaced with Bitumen that hadn’t fully stuck yet. So riding it with asphalt coming apart, was like riding on ice. According to Pecco Bagnaia, when following through Turn 7, he said it was like being hit with a minigun* due to all the stones being launched into the bike.
So, with all that in mind, what did Jorge Martin do? Misjudge his braking into Turn 1, come in way too hot, and he causes a five bike wreck, taking down himself, teammate Marco Bezzecchi, Trackhouse’s Raul Fernandez, Fabio di Giannantonio (Who rejoined), and Fermin Aldeguer. An absolutely disastrous smash that led to Bez losing 30 points out of his Championship lead due to Marquez’s perfect weekend.
And that’s only the start of the ramifications. Martin was then hit with a Double Long Lap penalty for his first major incident of the year. That will likely automatically take him out of the running for Brno in a fortnights’ time. And it’s another bit of stress for Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola, who has been in the wars with Martin since Day 1. From the contract dispute that nearly ended up with both parties in court, to it being the second time Martin’s wiped out his team, with Rivola having to apologise to the same time he was kissing and making up with a week earlier in Mugello when they were dominant.
It’s far too early to be making grander narratives about the title race, but if it came down to Team orders and the necessary evil they can be, think about it – Martin has wiped out his own team twice since joining in 2025. Bez has been consistently better than him all season long, and Martin’s leaving for Yamaha at season’s end. If it comes down to team orders, it’s obvious who gets the call at Aprilia.
But given in Italy a week ago, Paolo Borona said he called a rider’s meeting and talked about respecting rivals on track after Martin and Fernandez crashed into each other. Three weeks later, it’s pretty embarrassing that Aprilia is having to lick their wounds in public. It’s like they’ve refused to admit they’ve got a hangover, despite everyone seeing them piss in the neighbours pool the previous night.
I don’t envy Rivola. If nothing else, he’s done a superb job managing some very delicate shit at Aprilia in the last 18 months – From Martin’s contract impasse and departure, the rise of the brand from contender to genuine title favourites, the prospect of an internal fight for said title, Trackhouse becoming a genuine rival on the same bike as you and now the delicate matter of your departing star signing kicking up a colossal stink. This is crisis management on an industrial scale. Oh, and Defcon 2’s arrived – Marc Marquez is a threat again, despite having a 72 point headstart.
I said on Crash’s MotoGP Podcast after Barcelona the only real problem Aprilia may have is the lack of experience in competing for a championship and what that may do to the nature of their team. We’re now seeing a test of it in real time. Martin’s going to be compromised for at least one more weekend. Bez might have to start fighting Marquez head on again very soon with the title still very much possible for the latter if he keeps improving. The real battle for 2026 is about to begin.
Holy Shit, Leopard
During the weekend Leopard got hit with the biggest penalty I’ve ever seen across the MotoGP classes. It turns out that after the French Grand Prix, Honda requested the engine of Adrian Fernandez as well as others on the grid as a sample size at the end of their usage cycle. Honda then breaks the seals on said engines the sport has for compliance to strip them down and rebuild them. When this happened with Fernandez’s machine, it turns out that the engine seals on said engines had already been tampered with.
Credit to David Emmett for explaining, but the engine seals in Moto3 are sealed in both plastic (which is heatproof), and metal wire. Both failsafes had proof of tampering, a strict breach of the engine durability regulations. In other words, they were guilty of breaking the seal on an engine without authorisation from the series itself. And to make matters worse, because the seals were broken, that engine is considered withdrawn from the six engine allocation the team is allowed for the whole season.
And then the whoppers – Fernandez was disqualified from the first six races of the season, due to those engines being in breach of the technical regulations. As a result, Fernandez loses 77 points, dropping him from third in the standings, to 19th before Balaton actually took place. Harsh? Maybe, it’s not Fernandez’s fault, but you have to throw the book at these sorts of incidents to stop anyone else from thinking about trying the same stunt, even if Leopard didn’t actually modify the engines they had.
Leopard appealed the penalty, and it was quickly thrown out. We don’t know yet about what could happen next but the team put out a defensive statement that considered legal action and a potential visit to the International Court of Appeal. Kinda begs the question, if seals had been broken, how far back does this run? Is this a new development? Has Fernandez’s bike been guilty from before 2026? What about Jaume Masia, who won a Moto3 title in 2023? It’s moments like that which will get fans talking. I’ve always said that scrutineering in Motorsport has to be done with an emphasis of “good faith”, but that gets thrown out the moment your hand gets caught in the cookie jar. More on the story as we get it.
The Lightning Round
The 6-7 celebration from Marc? A tribute to Willow Crutchlow, who asked for it. I’ll just about allow for a 33-year old man to do that shit given it was for a child.
Pedro Acosta’s 13th podium finish without a victory, a new MotoGP record, passing Colin Edwards. I know he’ll probably be fine once he gets to Ducati in 2027, but I’d really love to see him get a win for KTM given how hard both he and them are working. He’s riding the nuts off what’s clearly the field’s third best bike.
Jack Miller was seventh on a Yamaha on pace alone and at one point was running fourth with a train behind him. What a time to be alive. I’m starting to get the impression that Fabio Quartararo is starting to phone it in on the way out. Also, shoutout to Iker Lecuona in P8 for Gresini, who only got the call up to race on Monday. Superb effort and proof his time in MotoGP was probably cut short.
Interesting that MotoGP is seemingly having further spaced out grids from the German GP in July, and Holeshot devices will be banned after the Summer Break. A lot of people will be quick to use Balaton’s crash as the final straw for the device, but as some riders have pointed out, I think the real issue is the aero locking bikes under braking and some tracks like Balaton and Barcelona having natural pinch points at Turn 1 that make crashes more likely. I’m not sure messing with the grid actually solves that problem.
Pecco Bagnaia might have accidentally given the game away that this was Balaton Park’s final appearance on the MotoGP calendar, with a rumoured move to the Hungaroring in the works for 2027. I can’t say I’m going to miss it if that holds up. Nothing about Balaton made any sense to me. The sport didn’t need another circuit close to Budapest. Race tracks being built at all is a rare thing in modern economies because they’re so financially hard to justify, and with that creative freedom in mind, how did you end up designing something so drab and dangerous as a track? Why would you want to copy so many elements of a street track, something so many fans don’t want in modern Motorsport?
The fact this year’s race didn’t release attendance figures was telling. The main grandstand even on Sunday had about half its seats empty. The previous promoters of the race collapsed when Victor Orban was voted out of power in Hungary’s recent elections. The Hungaroring team inherited that job, but it was far too close to the actual event to market it properly. And not only that, think about the nature of being a sports fan. For most sports fans, you may only have the luxury of being able to go to one race a year. Central Europe is a logjam, with more popular and historic rounds not far away.
Germany is a festival that just so happens to have a Grand Prix in it, Assen has over 100 years of history, Brno is a fan favourite track, Austria was a popular round until the pandemic. Because MotoGP’s calendar is now 22 races as opposed to the 18 it had been for years prior, it may have spread itself too thin and now it’s making its fans choose between races too close together. If nothing else, given Hungary is a really well liked F1 venue, MotoGP has a chance of piggybacking off it in future. Might want to do something about those runoffs, mind you.
No seriously, what’s it going to take for Manu Gonzalez to get a MotoGP seat? We are not giving this man the Thomas Luthi treatment, he’s far too good for that! The first three-race winning streak in Moto2 since Fermin Aldeguer in 2023, and in three very different styles too. Extreme tyre wear in Spain? Check? Bully beatdown in Mugello check? Game of pace in Balaton with no tyre wear at all? Check. This man is riding in a different league compared to the rest, and the reasons why you DON’T take him is getting scarier by the race.
Sprint Rating: ⭐ 1/2 (Poor) – Nothing doing here folks. Marquez took the lead, didn’t look back, Acosta was in his own race, and not much else happened behind.
Grand Prix Rating: 7/10 (Good) – One of the better races of 2026 to be honest. Acosta and Marquez had back-to-back weekends of the best combat we’ve had all season long, with back and forth passes, aggression that never quite got over the line into illegal territory, and we had a fun queue behind Jack Miller for the beefier points, with no protagonists given the depleted field. Fun. See you in Brno!
