It was 3 June 2024 when 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Jorge Martin unpinned the grenade that detonated the 2025 rider market. Ducati had intended to promote him to its factory team alongside 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Pecco Bagnaia, but made a sharp U-turn when 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Marc Marquez said he would not accept a works bike at Pramaꦫc and may walk away altogether.

Martin, then champions🔥hip leader, turned his back on Ducati as a result, believing he was entitled to a factory seat. Aprilia stumped up the cash to get his signature and one of the biggest rider♚ market shake-ups for a number of years was complete.

Almost exactly a year on from that, Martin is once again reshaping the MotoGP landscape 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:with a shock report that he is actively looking to enact a performance clause🔴 in his contract with Aprilia to leave at the end of this year.

The report, broken by the Spanish language edition of motorsport.com, claims Martin’s contract with Aprilia means he ca꧙n accept rival offers if he is not among the championship contenders by the French Grand Prix.

That deadline has now passed, but Jorge Martin has completed just a single race in 2025 - the Qatar sprint, as separate big incidents have left him unable to take part in the campaign at large. Currently, following a crash in the Qatar GP, Martin is not expected to return to actionಞ until at least the 𒉰German GP.

Will Jorge Martin quit Aprilia?

The idea of a performance clause being enacted in such𝓡 circumstances raises eyebrows. Aprilia hasn’t had a good season, it must be said. It sits last in the constructors’ table as the only manufacturer not to have scored a podium yet in 2025 (KTM technically hasn’t either due to🐟 a penalty in Qatar, but Maverick Vinales did on pace finish second).

But that doesn’t really tellꦚ the full story. Aprilia has had to persevere without Martin since day one of the Sepang test, while forging ahead with preparation of its 2025 bike with a new face in Marco Bezzecchi, a rookie in Ai Ogura, and an underwhelming runner in Raul Fernan🎀dez.

Ogura holds its best result, which was a fifth at the opening round in Thailand, while Bezzecchi has struggled for stability on the bike when on new tyres - hindering his results🔴 hopes with lacklustre qualifying results.

For Martin to turn around and say the bike is not good enough, having not ridden it at full fitness for more than 13 laps this year, is ꧃an unfair judgement being passed down to an Aprilia squad that has done nothing but stick by h🦩im through his various injury ordeals.   

The no-win situation Aprilia now faces

According to the motorsport.com report, Aprilia intends to seek legal action to block this clause being activated. Not unreasonably, Martin’s decision - which he informed the manufacturer of last week - was taken about as well as aꦍ bowl of cold sick. He hasn’t had any pro🧜per time to evaluate the RS-GP to even look at touching the performance clause written into his contract because of his injuries, and Aprilia will likely use this as a basis for force majeure.

He has reportedly been willing to extend the deadline for this performance clause to be considere⛦d through to the San Marino Grand Prix in September.

But if he is not expected to be able to be fit enough again until the German GP on 11-13 July, that lꦉeaves him and Aprilia six races for the performance of the bike to be convincing. It’s unclear if extending that deadline also takes into consideration the bike’s performance while he isn’t on it.

Either way, if the stipulation is that🍸 Martin was a title contender by the French GP, that won’t be the case come San Marino in mid-September. Though a world champion, he isn’t overturning a 171-point deficit that will have swell🎐ed well beyond 200 by the time he is back.

So, Aprilia🐽 has a good legal basis to fight its corner. But that will 🔯be immaterial: once you’ve lost the locker room, there’s no coming back. And, clearly, Jorge Martin’s mind has already been made up.

If a rider doesn’t want to be with a team, you can’t keep them around. It’s bad for everyone. KTM took this approach with Johann Zarco, who’d quit his two-year dea🅠l a season early and was ousted after the San Marinoꩵ GP to avoid team morale being dragged further down.

Aprilia winning a legal dispute to hold Martin to his contract isn’t really a win at all, because how do you even fathom placing a rider within a team who doesn’t want to be there? How can you possibly convince your hard-working mechanics, who spend 22 weeks a year away from home❀, to rally around a rider who didn’t feel his surroundings were good enough for him?

From a business standpoint, Aprilia may also find engaging with curren💜t and future sponsors harder if the narrative around its 2025 season is that it couldn’t hold onto the reigning world champion. As well as this, convincing riders to join your project could lead to headaches.

Jorge Martin’s reputation as world champion may be irreparably damaged

Aprilia absolutely should fight the legal side of things. Much like a coac🌼hes' challenge in ice hockey, if you’ve got one in your pocket and you’re down a few goals you’ve got to use it - regardless of the outcome.

But there will surely be a sense among Aprilia management of what the point to a fight would even be. This is a manufacturer that stumped up the money to sign Martin for 2025, who raved about his leadership at the Barcelona 𒊎test last November, who fought publicly to convince the world Michelin was to blame for the testing crash that took him out of the first three rounds of the season. And this is the marque who, ultimately, got the regulations changed to allow Martin to test the RS-GP 👍ahead of his comeback later in the season. And it’s all been for nothing it seems.

Aprilia, rightly or wrongly, has done a lot to stick by riders through di꧟fficult times - see Andrea Iannone’s doping scandal back 🃏in 2020 - regardless of how it could negatively impact it in the long run.

To turn your back on this loyalty, Martin should not be looked favourably upon. Arguably he is MotoGP’s least popular world champion, with little of the mainstream ap🎉peal that others like Marc Marquez, Fabio Quartararo and even Pecco Bagnaia have.

Coming int♍o the season, Martin wasn’t even looking at fighting for the championship. He told the Tengo Un Plan podcast in January: “The challenge is huge, since I’m getting on a low top 10 bike, while leaving one from the top positions. If I were to start from fifth place, and finish by winning races or getting a second, I’d be very proud.

“The importaꦗnt thing, however, is to progress. Bringing the Aprilia to fight for the championship won’t be easy, so the ambition for the new season isn’t that. The opportunity could present itself maybe as early 𝕴as 2026 but, for now, I just have to try to do my best.”

Ultimately, he was signed by Aprilia to be 𝔍its reference rider and be the difference m🎃aker on the bike - much like Fabio Quartararo has been at Yamaha. Quartararo, incidentally, turned down an Aprilia offer last year because it couldn’t stump the cash it ultimately did for Martin. One has to wonder how that decision has replayed in Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola’s mind since.

Mu🌌ch of the struggles other Aprilia riders are having at the moment are in some ways down to Martin’s absence. Marco Bezzecchi noted at Le Mans that he could really do with having the world champion back tဣo help get the bike pointing in the right direction.

When he does come back, it🐼’s on the backdrop of him not wanting to be there in the first place. How can he possibly be expected to push a bike to its limits, risking cr💛ashing again, if his mind is on new horizons in 2026?

How other manufacturers approach him now will also be intriguing. Can you really trust a rider, even if he is a world champion, to ꦛa contract he may look to break?

What it could mean for the rest of the grid

The role that Martin’s manager Albert Valera🦩 is playing in all this is unknown. But some of ൲the key moves in the 2026 rider market revolve around him.

Assuming Martin’s stance is that he still needs to be a factory team rider, that leaves only Honda with an available seat. Luca Marini is out of contract at the end of this year. And while his results have not been glittering, Honda has reaཧlly engaged with his analytical approach to bike development and haven’t really suggested they’d like to lose him.

French Grand Prix winner Johann Zarco has also been making plays for that Honda seat. He may be iced out of it altogether and forced to stay at LCR, which is not a bad option, regardless of the fact he’s consistently been HRC’s best rider 🔴for the past year.

Pedro Acosta - who is also managed by Valera - has been linked to a factory Honda move for next year as he grows impatient with lacklustre results at KTM. A corner seems to be being turned with KTM’s form for the 20-year🐼-old, though, and perhaps he will sit tight to the end of his contract next year before making any big decisions.

But if you’re Honda and there is a chance to sign two riders, Jorge Martin and Pedro Acosta, w🐲hy would you choose the former?

Martin’s status as a world champion isn’t super strong any more. The form of Marc Marquez on the factory D♛ucati this year, coupled with the results of Pecco Bagnaia, cast some doubt as to where Martin would stack up in a title battle in 2025 had he still be on a Ducati.

And while he’s not exactly old at 27, the prospect of Acosta for a manufacturer is tantalising. At 20, he’s got at least 15 more years in him and he is yet to even scrape the ceiling of his potential. Martin ಌis likely in the midst of his peak years, but who knows what kind of rider returns in Germany after all of his injury pr🐬oblems?

If Acosta does go to Honda, a return to KTM seems somewhat unlikely for Martꩵin given it’s not really ﷺin a much better position to Aprilia right now and has a future that remains uncertain amidst its financial crisis.

As much as it’s possible that Martin is on the grid in 2026, there is a risk he’s walked his way into a situat𓄧ion similar to Andrea Dovizioso’s in 2020 where he effectively priced himself off the market and sat on the sidelines for most of 2021. His career lasted until Misano 2022, when he called time on it after th♔at in what was a meek end for someone just a few years prior almost beat Marc Marquez to the title.

One party that will be looking on with a degree of smugness❀ will be Ducati management. Martin felt he could stand on his own 𒅌two feet without Ducati, trading away the grid’s best bike even at Pramac for 2025 for a big money factory deal at Aprilia that he isn’t even convinced about now with barely 200 laps under his belt on the bike.

This very much feels like the beginnings of a cautionary t𒈔ale…