The Three Riders Who Could Slide into Jorge Martin’s MotoGP Seat
After announcing his intention to leave Aprilia at the end of this season, the MotoGP rider market has gone haywire. Here’s how it could pan out.
Yesterday, Jorge Martin announced his intention to leave Aprilia at the end of the 2025 MotoGP season. In doing so he threw a proverbial hand grenade into the rider market, starting the MotoGP ‘silly season’ a couple of months early.
While we have no official response from Aprilia on the matter, it’s clear that if the Noale factory respects the Spaniard’s wishes, they’ll need another rider to slot in for 2025. The thing is, there aren’t a huge number of riders Aprilia could turn to, with most of the MotoGP grid already having contracts for 2026 already signed and sealed.
Of the three that could potentially move, we have Enea Bastianini, Luca Marini, and the Japanese rookie Ai Ogura.
Bastianini began racing for the Tech3 KTM team at the beginning of this season, although he’s not really gelled with the RC16 so far. He still struggled to get to grips with the bike at Silverstone last weekend, ending the race a lowly 15 place (18-seconds back from the lead) and quickly branded the result as the worst of his career. Would he fare better on the Aprilia is anyone’s guess, although the move back into an Italian team would at least make him feel a little more at home in the garage.
The next option, Luca Marini, had a tough first season with Honda in 2024, although the bike seems to have turned a corner in 2025, as Johan Zarco on the LCR Honda showed, with his win in Le Mans and a podium at Silverstone. Marini is also highly respected in the Honda garage, and is widely lauded for his level headed and analytical approach to building the bike up from where it was when he arrived. Granted, he’s not in ideal condition right now following his severe crash during a practice session ahead of a Suzuka 8 Hour bid, although those injuries will almost certainly have been recovered from by the start of next season. Casting some doubt on this theory are reports that Marini is in talks with Honda regarding renewing for 2026. That might look like the safer option for the Italian, rather than switching bikes for 2026.
The final name that could fill Martin’s shoes is the Trackhouse Aprilia rookie Ai Ogura. The Japanese rider has been the standout rookie so far in 2025, regularly out-pacing his Trackhouse teammate, the more experienced Raul Fernandez, and currently sitting in 12-place in the championship on 43-points. Given Ogura’s ability to punch well above his experience in the top class, and his already insider knowledge of the RSGP, he might be just the ticket to join Marco Bezzechi in the factory squad.
That all hinges, though, on Aprilia appeasing Martin’s request to leave the Noale factory. But with radio silence from the team on that front, we now have to play a bit of a waiting game for further information.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
