‘Like he’s crashing every corner’: Winner’s signature style, star set for surgery, Aussie ‘treading water’ – MotoGP Talking Points
If you’re a Japanese MotoGP fan, your definition of long-term is 22 years.
If you’re Ai Ogura, it’s eight days.
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Either way, Ogura’s maiden MotoGP win on Sunday in the Grand Prix of the Netherlands – the first for a Japanese rider since Makoto Tamada won his home race at Motegi for Honda way back in 2004 – was cause for celebration. And, as Ogura saw it, one he’d been waiting long enough for.
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“After finishing three times in a row in second place, I finally got it,” he mused.
Finally?
At the Czech Grand Prix at Brno one weekend prior, Ogura – the second-year rising Aprilia star – had taken his maiden MotoGP pole position, finished second in the sprint for his best result yet in MotoGP’s short-format Saturday races, then finished in the same position 24 hours later to usurp his third place at Le Mans in May for his best Grand Prix result.
At Assen, Ogura qualified second. Finished second in the sprint. And then – finally, as he put it – went one better.
It’s been a long, long time for Japanese riders and fans, and the world’s press tried every which way to elicit an emotional response from the famously taciturn and level-headed 25-year-old.
How excited was he? Had he dreamed of this very moment? Was this the single greatest moment of his career?
“Not much to say, it’s just good,” he began.
“I never imagined [winning a MotoGP race] until today comes. This one is very close to [being] world champion [in Moto2 two years ago] … maybe even better.”
Ogura prefers to let his actions speak louder than his words, and for his peers to try to explain what has turned a rider who laboured through an injury-riddled 16th-place rookie campaign in 2025 into – whisper it – a title contender.
There’s no secret to what Ogura does – his ability to not wear his tyres early in races and then strike late when his rivals are scrambling for grip has, in just 28 Grand Prix starts, become close to class-leading.
Understanding it? Fellow Aprilia rider Jorge Martin shook his head.
“When you follow Ai, it’s strange because it seems like he’s crashing every corner because it seems [his body] is really down, but the bike is straight … I won’t try this,” the 2024 world champion said, Ogura squirming as he sat next to Martin in the post-race press conference, then bursting into laughter.
“I struggle to follow because it feels like he’s crashing,” Martin added.
“But he just turns and just goes …”.
Bezzecchi loses his cool & gets banned | 00:17
While his pace looked race-winning from the off at Assen, Ogura didn’t have it all his own way on a sweltering Dutch Sunday.
An early-race dust-up with Trackhouse Aprilia teammate Raul Fernandez saw him shuffled down to sixth on the second lap. While he recovered to third and began to close in on Martin and Fernandez, Ogura’s rear ride-height device became jammed on lap 16, and he lost over one second to the two riders who stood in his way of snapping that long – or short – victory drought.
“Before I get the problem on the rear device, I was managing and I could see the situation of Raul and Jorge, and I say ‘OK, there is a possibility’ [to win],” he said.
“I activated the rear device out of the last chicane, you unlock the rear device into turn one … I don’t know how, but somehow the rear device activated again between turns one and three, probably I touched some button. I think that was a mistake from me. That was a scary one, but I don’t lose so much time.”
Once Ogura managed to brake hard enough to disengage the rear device, he lapped over a second faster than Martin on lap 17, passed him for second on lap 18, then got his own back on Fernandez on lap 20 of 26. Within two laps, his advantage was over one second. By the final lap, he could – relatively speaking – roll out of the throttle and cruise to a win by over two seconds.
Ogura’s recent form, Aprilia’s utter dominance at Assen – the Italian manufacturer locked out the first four places on the grid for the first time in its history and were nine seconds faster than the best of the rest, Fabio Di Giannantonio’s Ducati in fourth place – and a world championship that has become ever-harder to read means Ogura is up to fourth in the standings, just 25 points off the series lead.
With 12 of the 22 rounds this season still to play out, Ogura is in the middle of a gaggle of eight riders within 63 points – less than the maximum 74 on offer across two Grand Prix weekends – from the top spot.
He’s the least experienced of that octet, and – with a grin – gave a very on-brand answer when asked if he saw himself as a title contender after the best eight days of his career, and Japan’s best day in more than two decades.
“25 points back, so if the numbers say yes, then yes,” he said.
“I’ll keep doing my job for the next races, and if it’s enough, I can be happy.
“Winning in Assen makes it even more special. I’m happy to ride good in front of all the fans in this place. When I crossed the line, there was so much satisfaction.”
‘CRAZY’ TO BE LEADING TITLE CHASE, SAYS MARTIN
Equally satisfied, and perhaps a little disbelieving? That would be Martin, who – two rounds after skittling five riders with a first-corner gaffe in Hungary that saw him hit with a double long-lap penalty for the following round at Brno – left Assen as the leader of the world championship standings after taking third place on a day where teammate Marco Bezzecchi’s brutal recent run continued.
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Bezzecchi – taken down by Martin at Balaton Park, then banned from the Czech Grand Prix for striking a trackside marshal after he’d crashed in the Brno sprint – had a 200km/h-plus crash on lap two at Assen, low-siding at the super-fast turn 15 and violently barrel-rolling through the gravel trap.
Given the ferocity of the crash, it was little surprise the Italian was taken from the circuit’s medical centre to a nearby hospital in Groningen for checks.
A statement issued by Aprilia said: “Initial clinical examinations confirmed that the rider is fully conscious and displays normal mobility in all four limbs, with no immediate signs of major neurological or systemic complications … however, due to severe pain resulting from the high-energy impact, the medical team has elected to transfer Bezzecchi to Groningen Hospital [to] allow him to undergo comprehensive diagnostic imaging and specialised scans to definitively rule out any underlying injuries and ensure a safe recovery path.”
Later, Bezzecchi was discharged after CT scans revealed no injuries.
Bezzecchi – who won the opening three Grands Prix of the year and led the standings from after round two in Brazil in April – has scored just 13 points in the past three rounds, Martin taking over at the top by seven points after Assen.
Di Giannantonio (third, 16 points behind) and Ogura (fourth, 25 points in arrears) are within one Grand Prix win of top spot, with Marc Marquez – who was seventh in Assen after being penalised one position for a track limits violation on the final lap while fighting with KTM’s Enea Bastianini – 40 points adrift in fifth overall.
Given he’s still playing catch-up with Aprilia after missing the majority of his 2025 season with injuries – and having to sit out the first pre-season test as he recovered from yet more surgery – Martin, who will leave Aprilia for Yamaha next season, couldn’t believe he was leading the championship for the first time since he sealed his 2024 title with Ducati in the final race of that season in Barcelona.
“My first thought was to Marco, because I saw his crash and I know what it is to be there,” he said of his teammate.
“I don’t really care about being first, second or third … at this point of the championship, it’s not really important. It’s better to be first than fifth, that’s for sure. But I’m not 100 per cent physically, I struggled with my back a lot this weekend, and I’m not at my 100 per cent with the bike.
“I don’t know where is the limit … it’s crazy the position that we are [in].
“I’m focused on myself to try to improve my feelings, I really don’t look a lot into the results. I’m missing something, and I’m working on it to try to understand.”
STAR DUO MAKE EARLY EXITS AS ACOSTA FACES SURGERY
Sunday’s 10th Grand Prix of the season was always going to be tough given the relentless nature of the high-speed Assen layout combined with the heatwave that has blasted Europe of late not sparing the northernmost track on the calendar, but six riders failed to see the chequered flag, Bezzecchi just one of a high-profile list of retirements.
Three-time Assen MotoGP winner Francesco Bagnaia – who became a father for the first time over the weekend – was another to make an early exit, the two-time premier-class champion forced to stop after 15 laps with brake issues when he was running in fourth place.
KTM’s Pedro Acosta – who was announced last week as Bagnaia’s replacement as Marc Marquez’s teammate at the Ducati factory team for 2027-28 – was another to pull out, the Spaniard suddenly slowing at the first corner on lap 13 with what, initially and understandably given KTM’s reliability woes in recent rounds, was diagnosed as a mechanical failure.
Acosta later revealed that pain in his right arm – “I’m suffering for one year, and I lose completely the feeling in three fingers of the hand” – was the reason for his withdrawal, with surgery scheduled for early this week ahead of the next round in Germany in a fortnight’s time.
“It’s not arm pump, it’s in the wrist … it’s carpal tunnel [syndrome],” he explained.
“In some tracks it’s worse, in some tracks it’s better – yesterday [in the sprint race], I was suffering from lap three but more or less I knew where the [brake] lever was.
“Today behind Marc [Marquez], I was not able to know if I even had the lever in my hand. One moment I went wide in turn one because if not, I was going to totally hit him .. it’s quite strange when you don’t even know how much power you put in the brakes.
“Our idea was to take surgery after Sachsenring [Germany], but it’s better that we do it now.”
MILLER STAYS THE COURSE TO BANK POINTS
The unusually high attrition rate at Assen helped Jack Miller to his second-best Grand Prix result of the season on Sunday, the Pramac Yamaha rider classified in 12th place after KTM’s Maverick Vinales, ahead of him on the road on the final lap, was demoted one position for a track limits breach.
From 18th on the grid, Miller finished 37.244secs behind race-winner Ogura after 26 laps, and was a long way behind the best-placed Yamaha of Fabio Quartararo, the 2021 world champion finishing eighth and 19.039secs from victory to snap a three-race scoring drought.
“We managed to being it home, a couple of points, but we’re treading water at this point,” Miller said.
“We need to start making some headway. I never really got going on the right-hand side [of the tyre] … from the beginning to the end it was never really amazing, but it was never really s**t. It stayed constant, I knew I couldn’t smoke it, I just had nothing on the right-hand side.
“The left-hand side was alright and I could fight with the guys around me, but the right-hand side was lukewarm the whole way through.
Miller, 20th in the world championship standings with 15 points, now heads to Japan for the Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race next weekend before returning to Europe and the German Grand Prix to round out the first half of the season.
Miller will again team with Japanese veteran Katsuyuki Nakasuga and Italian World Superbike rider Andrea Locatelli for the Yamaha Racing Team at Suzuka; last year, the Miller/Nakasuga/Locatelli triumvirate finished second to a team headed by Miller’s MotoGP rival Johann Zarco, who remains sidelined with a knee injury after his first-corner crash in Barcelona in May.
