
Aprilia Racing has suffered a nightmare start to the season that could see Marco Bezzecchi take on the majority of the 2025 RS-GP’s development.
The opening day of the 2025 MotoGP Sepang Test did not go how Aprilia planned at all.
Jorge Martin crashed twice on his first outing of the year and ended up being transferred to the hospital. It was later followed by Raul Fernandez being declared unfit for the remainder of the test after he fractured a metacarpal.
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Marco Bezzecchi and Ai Ogura are now the two Aprilia riders left for the Sepang Test. Bezzecchi is making his Aprilia debut this year and Ogura is a MotoGP rookie.
With two of Aprilia’s main riders now absent Bezzecchi was quizzed about how his testing duties might change for the remainder of the test.
“I don’t know. First of all, I would say that we need to wait about Jorge,” Bezzecchi responded.
“Raul, I noticed right now that he’s hurt himself. We will wait for [news on] Jorge and then we will understand what we can do. For the moment, sorry, but I don’t know.”
Since the original posting of this article, Aprilia Racing has declared Jorge Martin unfit for the remainder of the Sepang Test.
Bezzecchi ended the opening day of the 2025 season in 18th place on the Aprilia RS-GP. The Italian finished the day with a 1:59.207, which was 1.652 seconds slower than Fabio Quartararo’s best lap time.
When speaking about his first day of testing in Malaysia the 26-year-old said: “We tried the spec from Montmelo and then I jumped on the new one.
“I adapted a little bit and then I made a back check to the spec of Montmelo and fortunately we put that [older specification] on the back of the box. [The new parts are] a small step, but still it’s early to say something is more important. I felt some positives, of course.
“Everything that I tried was better, but I still need time on the bike to really understand how big is the step from the old one to the new one. But I felt immediately something better. So this is why I kept the new one.”