How MotoGP's manufacturers are stacking up ahead of the 2026 season
17 February 2026Excitement continues to grow for the 2026 MotoGP season, with only two days of testing remaining, and the first race weekend just around the corner.
But who will be the early front-runners? And who will be playing catch-up? We’re taking a look at the expectations for what we can expect from each of MotoGP’s manufacturers in the first few rounds of the 2026 season.
Ducati
In recent years, Ducati have been the manufacturer to beat, winning the last four MotoGP titles. This remains the case in 2026, after Marc Marquez’s impressive first season with the Ducati Lenovo Team. However, the Sepang Test has indicated that it may be the younger of the Marquez brothers who has the advantage going into the first few rounds of 2026.
BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP’s Alex Marquez has set himself up as a title contender following an impressive performance at the Sepang Test, which saw him top the overall timings, and show impressive pace during the Sprint simulation. After finishing as runner up in the 2025 season, Alex Marquez’s first year on a factory-spec Ducati is looking full of potential.
Another Ducati rider whose performance at the Sepang Test suggests a positive start to the 2026 season is Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team’s Fabio Di Giannantonio. Di Giannantonio finished 3rd fastest overall, and was in the top 3 every day of the test, showing the consistency his 2025 results were sometimes lacking. The first of Di Giannantonio’s four grand prix podiums in 2025 came at Round 3, the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, and he will be aiming to repeat that podium, if not better it, when MotoGP travels to Austin at the end of March.
Contrasting this, Fermin Aldeguer has had a challenging start to the 2026 season. A training accident back in January resulted in a fractured femur, and saw Aldeguer miss the Sepang Test, and the season launch event in Kuala Lumpur. It has since been confirmed that Aldeguer will also be absent from the Buriram test, as well as the opening round of the season, meaning 2025’s MotoGP Rookie of the Year will have lost valuable time preparing for racing in 2026. Whilst fully recovering from injury is crucial, Aldeguer will start his 2026 season a step behind his competitors - not what he would have been hoping for.
Aprilia
Throughout the 2025 season, Aprilia showed themselves to be Ducati’s main threat, with Aprilia riders winning three of the last four races. In the last year of the current regulations, this is Aprilia’s chance to close the gap to Ducati, and competing with them for podium finishes and race wins will be their aim from the first race weekend of 2026.
Finishing 3rd in the 2025 Championship in his first year with Aprilia Racing, Marco Bezzecchi’s name was already being mentioned as a potential title contender in 2026, and placing 2nd overall in the Sepang Test has since cemented this theory. But aside from his results presenting him as a title contender, his confidence in his bike (which he affectionately calls ‘Albarosa’), and his team, is clear. Bezzecchi is so sure of Aprilia’s package, and so happy with his team, that he became one of the first riders to confirm their seat for the 2027 season. The announcement that Bezzecchi had extended his contract with Aprilia Racing came the day before the Sepang Test began, and took the form of a wedding ceremony between Bezzecchi and Albarosa - a clear signal of his commitment.
Bezzecchi’s teammate, Jorge Martin, faced a series of injuries in 2025 that resulted in him only appearing at eight out of the twenty-two rounds of the season. The 2024 MotoGP World Champion, who had also moved to Aprilia last year, therefore had limited opportunities to get to grips with the bike, and we arguably never quite saw his full potential for what he could achieve with the Aprilia machine. Ongoing recovery from revision surgeries meant Martin missed the recent Sepang Test, so our first insight into his form for 2026 will come at the Buriram Test. It will be crucial for Martin to get as much data and insight as possible from those two days of testing, and it’s likely we’ll see an improvement in his performance as the season goes on.
KTM
KTM’s 2025 season in MotoGP got off to a rocky start, with financial instability casting a shadow over the manufacturer. The Tissot Grand Prix of Czechia marked an uptick in form, with Red Bull KTM Factory Racing’s Pedro Acosta securing the first of five Grand Prix podiums across the season, with Red Bull KTM Tech3’s Enea Bastianini adding to that total with a Grand Prix podium at the Monster Energy Grand Prix of Catalonia.
Meanwhile, Acosta’s teammate Brad Binder equaled his worst MotoGP season result of 11th, and after some promising results for the start of Maverick Viñales’ first season with Red Bull KTM Tech3, (including what was a 2nd place finish at the Qatar Airways Grand Prix of Qatar until a tyre pressure penalty demoted him to 14th), a shoulder injury heavily impacted the rest of his season. Finding consistency will be the key to KTM’s success in the first rounds of the 2026 season, but their timings from the Sepang Test present a mixed picture for how likely this will be.
Pedro Acosta’s Sprint Simulation average from the Sepang Test saw him place 4th, which certainly isn’t a bad result, but with his average lap time 0.648 seconds slower than that of Alex Marquez, it’s clear that KTM have a lot of work to do if they want to catch up to Ducati. Having finished 4th in the 2025 MotoGP World Championship, Acosta will be aiming to start his third season in the premier class with strong results, with achieving his first MotoGP race win remaining the ultimate goal.
In 2025, Bastianini was recognised for his ability to climb up the field in the latter stages of grands prix, gaining the nickname of “the tyre whisperer” by some in the paddock, for his superior tyre management skills. His biggest issue however, was that his qualifying performances often failed to set him up for battling towards the front of the field, as starting so far back on the grid meant getting up to the front was a near-impossible task. The Sepang Test showed Bastianini greatly improving upon his lap time, in comparison to his qualifying lap in 2025, suggesting that his qualifying performances could improve this season. It will be interesting to see whether the first few qualifying sessions of 2026 show this to be correct, and if so, Bastianini could find himself achieving more consistent top ten finishes.
Honda
Moving from concession rank D to C for the 2026 MotoGP season was a huge cause for celebration for Honda. 2025 saw their first Grand Prix victory since the 2023 Americas GP, with a fantastic home win from LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco at the Michelin Grand Prix of France, along with several podium finishes from Zarco and Honda HRC Castrol’s Joan Mir. For 2026, Honda will be eager to see further improvement and will be aiming to shrink the gap to their competitors.
Joan Mir finished 5th overall at the Sepang Test and topped the rain-impacted day two of the test, marking Honda’s first P1 in testing for 1452 days. The 2020 MotoGP World Champion had a difficult 2025 season, crashing out of grands prix - often as a result of being tangled up in somebody else’s mistake, far too frequently to score consistent points. Mir was evidence of Honda’s progress throughout 2025 though, with a 3rd place finish at the Motul Grand Prix of Japan giving Mir his first podium with Honda, and his first MotoGP podium since 2021, which was then backed up by another 3rd place finish at the Petronas Grand Prix of Malaysia. Mir will be looking to expand upon the progress Honda has made, and will be another rider surely aiming for consistent top ten finishes at the very least.
Diogo Moreira has spent his time in pre-season testing adapting to a MotoGP bike with his LCR Honda team. Moreira’s efforts at the Sepang Test saw him shave over two seconds off of his day one lap time, as he sought to gain further understanding of the bike and its behaviour. Though he was unable to beat the time set by 2025 LCR Honda rider Somkiat Chantra, Moreira will continue to learn at the Buriram Test, and this is likely to continue into the first few rounds of 2026. Moreira’s home race, the Brazilian Grand Prix, is Round 2 on this season’s calendar. Nobody will be more excited for MotoGP’s return to Brazil than the current Moto2 World Champion, and he will be hoping for good results in front of his home crowd.
Yamaha
Yamaha’s switch to using a V4 engine means they will be using the first few rounds of the 2026 MotoGP season to settle in, and it’s unlikely we’ll see them fighting at the front from the beginning. As the only manufacturer ranked D in the concessions system for 2026, Yamaha were able to use the Sepang Shakedown, as well as the Sepang Test to give their four riders additional time to test and adapt to the new machine, but their timings from the Sepang Test show that they are still far off the ideal pace.
With Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP’s Fabio Quartararo only featuring in day 1 of the test, we can’t be sure how he would have fared on day 3 after Yamaha’s halted day on Tuesday. But with other Yamaha riders setting faster laps on the final day, it feels realistic to assume that Quartararo would have also improved, having been consistently the fastest Yamaha rider in 2025. Whilst it’s unrealistic to expect Quartararo to be fighting for podiums at the start of the 2026 season, he is likely to be the top performing Yamaha rider.
Triple WorldSBK Champion Toprak Razgatlıoğlu finished the Sepang Test as the top rookie, with his best lap time coming in 0.15s faster than Moreira. However, placing 19th overall is not where Razgatlıoğlu wants to be, after years of running at the top in WorldSBK. Razgatlıoğlu has made progress in identifying several areas for improvement, and the Prima Pramac Yamaha MotoGP rider will continue his adaptation to MotoGP during the Buriram Test, and the first few rounds of the season.
With the Buriram Test taking place this weekend, riders and teams will have their final opportunities to put together their desired package before MotoGP’s first race weekend of 2026, just one week later.
