- Ai Ogura said no on Saturday when asked whether Aprilia had told him to back Marco Bezzecchi’s title bid.
- Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola answered Marc Marquez’s team orders remark by saying Ducati plays team games at home with its family, per Crash.Net.
- One day after the denial, Ogura tangled with Bezzecchi at Turn 1, passed him for fourth and took 70 percent of the blame himself.
A One Word Answer Pulled a Trackhouse Sophomore Into the Paddock’s Loudest Row
Ai Ogura needed one word. Asked after the Malaysian Grand Prix sprint on Saturday whether Aprilia had instructed him to support Marco Bezzecchi in his title bid, the Trackhouse rider replied with a flat no.
The question had a source. After the sprint, Marc Marquez, the Ducati rider who leads the championship, said he knew Ogura would put up a tough fight for second place. Marquez said “the paddock is small” and that if he passed Ogura, Ogura would lose the podium, and that Ogura “cannot be between me and Bezzecchi.” Marquez did not suggest that Ogura was slowing him on purpose. He described a position and left the paddock to read the rest.
Aprilia has faced questions over the use of team orders for weeks as it chases its first world title in MotoGP. A second-year rider running between the championship leader and a factory Aprilia contender gave those questions a face. Ogura answered them over one weekend, first with a word on Saturday and then, a day later, with a pass on Bezzecchi at Turn 1.
A Sprint That Put Ogura Between Two Title Contenders
The sprint explains why Marquez said what he did. Ogura launched from fourth on the grid and passed both Pedro Acosta and Marquez to jump up to second. At the tight opening corner he ran wide, which brought Marquez back into play. The two banged wheels at the second part of the corner and again heading into Turn 2, and Marquez had to check up. He lost a place to Acosta, who went on to win.
Ogura inherited the lead on lap three, when polesitter Alex Marquez crashed out at Turn 14. He held it for a large chunk of the race, with light rain hitting parts of the track on and off. Later he and Marc Marquez swapped second place several times before the Ducati rider cemented his position. Bezzecchi, running just behind the pair, passed Ogura late for the final podium place and left him fourth.
Ogura gave a plain account of the duel with Marquez. “We both arrived in the same corner, side by side so many times,” he said, adding “I have to defend my position.” He accepted the outcome in his own words: “It was a bit messy, but he beat me at the end.”
The lead surprised him as much as anyone. “I was surprised that Pedro didn’t overtake me,” Ogura said of the laps he spent in front. He told himself “maybe my pace is quite okay,” and kept going. Then the field closed in. “My pace was kind of stuck,” he said. “The three riders behind me were just faster, and they all passed me.” A MotoGP sophomore, he left with no sprint win to add to his maiden grand prix success at Assen.
Ogura’s Brno pole earlier this season, which ended a six year Japanese pole drought, showed his speed over a single lap. Saturday in Malaysia posed a different test: leading in light rain with, as he put it, “no reference in the front,” and then watching three faster bikes go by.
Rivola Hits Back and Dall’Igna Answers
In a separate remark, Marquez said Ogura was trying to stay in front of him so that he would not lose the podium, and that Ogura could not sit between him and Bezzecchi without taking points away from his Aprilia colleague.
Rivola replied with a shrug and a jab. “What Marc says doesn’t really interest me that much,” the Aprilia CEO said. Then came the sting: in Rivola’s view, “they play team games for at home, with their family.”
Rivola was referencing the Phillip Island sprint, where Alex Marquez admitted he was not going to make a risky move on his older brother for the win. The arithmetic is simple. Had Alex passed Marc and won, Marc would have left Australia seven points ahead of Aprilia’s Jorge Martin instead of 10. It is a small number, and it let Rivola answer a question about Aprilia with a question about Ducati. Alex Marquez’s stance on helping his brother has been a storyline on this site all summer.
Ducati’s Gigi Dall’Igna weighed in on the team orders row. “This is a sport and, first of all, we must respect all the riders who race and risk their lives on motorbikes,” he said. He accepted that manufacturers have a say: “It’s clear that the manufacturers can ask for something, but they must stop where respect for the person, for the rider, begins.”
On the Marquez brothers specifically, Dall’Igna said “Marc and Alex are brothers, so it probably makes everything easier.” He added that Ducati tells its riders to stay out of trouble with riders of the same brand, and that apart from the start of the championship everything has gone very smoothly.
Both sides described the same fact pattern and drew opposite conclusions. For Ducati, a rider yielding to his brother is family. For Aprilia, the same act is a team game.
Sunday at Turn 1: Seventy Percent on Ogura
Not for the first time this season, two Aprilia riders collided in a race. This time it was Ogura and the title contender Bezzecchi on Sunday. Their lines crossed at Turn 1, and bodywork flew from the Trackhouse machine.
Ogura had trailed Bezzecchi for almost the whole race. He took his chance in the closing laps and claimed fourth. Both riders were able to continue after the contact.
Ogura explained what happened. “I was going for one position and he tried to defend his position,” he said. “It was a little bit my fault.” He said he had not seen Bezzecchi and expected him to hold his line into Turn 2, but Bezzecchi tried to hit the apex again in Turn 1. His verdict: “So I feel like 70/30, and 70 on me.”
He also described why the pass was on. “The reason why I could pass Bez was he didn’t get any drive out of 14 and Turn 3,” Ogura said. “That’s where I could catch him. And after that I started to have a lot of chances.” A rider who closes on a slower bike over several corners and passes it once he can has given the orders theory little to hold onto, and that is how Sunday looked.
Bezzecchi felt Ogura could have picked a better moment, but he offered no complaint. “Well, in that moment, Ai was a bit faster than me, so I think he would have overtaken me pretty soon, maybe three corners later,” he said. “Obviously, when you have the speed, you try to overtake. I know it, I’m a rider as well, so no hard feelings.” The contact risked a crash for both of them, he said, but everything went well in the end. “It’s something that can happen,” he said.
Bezzecchi’s afternoon had one more scare. He almost crashed on the final lap. “I lost the front as soon as I touched a little bit the brake, I really went completely out of the track,” he said. He lost fifth place to Enea Bastianini and finished sixth. Ogura closed to within one second of Alex Marquez and a podium finish at the chequered flag.
What the Weekend Leaves Behind
Bezzecchi took third in the sprint and sixth in the Grand Prix, and he lost further ground to Marquez in Malaysia. After the Malaysian round, Marquez’s lead stands at 44 points over Martin, who withdrew with a wrist injury, and Bezzecchi sits 67 points behind Marquez. Bezzecchi heads to Qatar third in the championship, 23 points behind his injured Aprilia teammate Martin. Marquez can win the title in Qatar if he extends his lead to 74 points over the weekend of 6 to 8 November, though the round faces major uncertainty, with Yamaha pulling out and several riders absent. Those figures stand as of the Malaysian Grand Prix on November 1.
Ogura holds the part of the story that is easiest to quote. He gave a clean answer on Saturday and a clear admission on Sunday, then a frank note on timing. At the flag, so near the podium, he wished he had acted sooner: “if I could have done my move two laps earlier.”
Then he moved on. “But it was my race,” Ogura said. “I have to accept it and move forward.” Trackhouse has had other human stories this season, among them how Raul Fernandez’s career at Trackhouse nearly ended before the team saved it.
Qatar is the next scheduled round, and Marquez can close out the title there if it goes ahead. Whatever Aprilia says about team orders in the days before it, Ogura’s answer is on the record, and it is still one word: no.
