Aprilia handed Marc Marquez the easiest hard miles of his 100th Grand Prix win. Before the field had even reached Turn 1 at Balaton Park, Jorge Martin had locked the front of his factory bike, speared into championship leader and teammate Marco Bezzecchi, and triggered a pile-up that gutted the title fight on the opening lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The crash also collected Raul Fernandez, Fermin Aldeguer and Fabio di Giannantonio. Only Di Giannantonio remounted. Bezzecchi, the points leader, was out on the spot; Martin, the 2024 world champion, climbed out of the gravel facing a double long-lap penalty for the next race.
For Aprilia, the most damning detail was that this had happened before. The marque's two factory riders had already taken each other out earlier in their partnership, and CEO Massimo Rivola did not hide his frustration that the script had repeated.
"Martin's mistake should never happen, especially when safety is at stake," Rivola said. He stopped short of excusing the error as a racing incident. "He made a bad braking mistake. It's a mistake a world champion shouldn't make."
Rivola's sharpest words were aimed at the recurring, self-inflicted nature of the damage. "The fact that we are also unlucky that when we crash, we have another Aprilia or even two in the middle — it looks also stupid," he said, comparing it to the earlier collision. "A smaller mistake but the same outcome. For us, even worse."
"This was predictable, in my opinion," the Honda rider said. "The layout doesn't help because you need to stop until 40 km/h."
Di Giannantonio, one of those caught up in the wreck, went further about the dread that now hangs over the start. "It's crazy that I have to pray before the race, not to do a good race, but to be safe after the first corner," he said. "Whatever happened to Jorge, we need to avoid it."
Several riders pointed the finger at the holeshot devices that compress the bikes for launch and, they argue, make them unstable and hard to stop in the opening braking zone. Jack Miller wants them gone.
"We take off the front device, it makes everybody's life easier," the Pramac Yamaha rider said.
The sporting cost lands heaviest on Aprilia. Bezzecchi clings to the championship lead on 180 points only because his rivals failed to capitalise, with Martin still second on 160 after his own scoreless afternoon. Di Giannantonio sits third on 138. Two factory bikes that started the weekend running first and second in the standings left Hungary with nothing — and a team boss publicly questioning how a world champion let it happen again.
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