Friday at the 2026 MotoGP Spanish Grand Prix resembled a familiar scene from last year, as Ducati topped both practice sessions and emerged as the strongest on long run pace. This step forward from Ducati was anticipated by most, not least current championship leader Marco Bezzecchi, with Jerez representing a more ‘normal’ set of conditions than those experienced in the first three races.

Yet Ducati’s hopes of ending a victory drought that now spans five grands prix appear to rest on the shoulders of its satellite riders, rather than its factory team duo, who are now in the midst of the works squad’s longest podium dearth in over a decade.

Fabio Di Giannantonio, Ducati’s leading rider in the standings and its only Sunday podium finisher so far in 2026, got the ball rolling in FP1. But his session-topping time was set on fresh rubber. The standout Ducati performer in the morning was Alex Marquez, who was third overall and the leading rider on used rubber.

In the hour-long Practice, the 30-year-old blitzed the field over a single lap, leading the way with a 1m35.704s to streak 0.333s clear of Di Giannantonio and 0.506s ahead of Aprilia’s Bezzecchi.

Ducati does have new parts to try at Jerez, but most of them are being tucked away until Monday’s post-race test. However, Davide Tardozzi confirmed on Friday that Ducati has brought an electronics update, which looks to be aimed to improving the GP26 in “the last part of braking and entry of the corner”, which is an area the Aprilia has excelled.

However, he told Sky Italy after Friday’s track action that the GP26’s braking issues persist: “The set-up is the same as last year, and the braking difficulties are still there. But the step forward was primarily mental: not dwelling on the problems and focusing on the positives, of which there are many.”

Jerez is a circuit that has generally suited Ducati in recent years, too, with the brand unbeaten at the Spanish venue for the last five seasons. Alex Marquez scored the most recent of those, celebrating a maiden victory in 2025.

He played down the idea of repeating this, noting on Thursday: “[Jerez] is the best circuit or the best moment of the season to come back and to have again a good performance, so we will try again to give our best. To repeat the things like last year would be amazing, but it’s a little bit not realistic in this moment.”

Yet the Gresini rider looked comfortable on his GP26 across Friday’s running at Jerez. A glance at the split times shows Alex Marquez topping sectors one, three and four. Intriguingly, Bezzecchi and Aprilia is fastest in sector two, which comprises the long right at Turn 5 onto the back straight down to the braking zone for the Turn 6 hairpin.

On a track that has good grip, the RS-GP certainly looks like it is still arcing through long, fast corners well and getting the bike stood up quickly. Tyre preservation has been a strength of the RS-GP over the GP26. But more importantly has been the GP26’s struggles to switch on its tyres in the early phases of races compared to the Aprilia.

At the US Grand Prix, Bezzecchi was already 1.7s clear of the leading Ducati by the end of lap two. In Brazil, he was 1.2s clear after four laps, while in Thailand, he was 1.3s up the road after a single tour.

Jerez is not an easy track to overtake on with the modern generation of bikes. Honda’s Luca Marini reckons “80%” of the race is decided in qualifying. On the one hand, then, Ducati’s rapid one-lap pace (not that Aprilia has lacked in this respect so far) will be a major asset. On the other, though, a strong qualifying for Bezzecchi puts him in a position to use the Aprilia’s strong early-race pace to effectively block off any Ducati assault.

Aprilia has shown it can turn things around, but Alex Marquez pace will worry

For all of its domination on Sundays so far in 2026, Aprilia hasn’t had the cleanest of runs on Saturdays yet. Jorge Martin, who now faces a three-place grid penalty at Jerez for riding slowly on the racing line in Practice, has its only Saturday win of the campaign. Ducati has the the other two.

Bezzecchi’s Saturdays have been especially weak. He crashed while leading in the Buriram sprint, was fourth in Brazil having struggled for pace on Friday and into Saturday. And crashed again at COTA while running in a podium place in the sprint.

As such, his four-point championship lead over team-mate Martin is a skewed picture of what his pace should have delivered him at this early stage. Circling back to that Brazil weekend, that was a good demonstration of the RS-GP’s quite friendly nature, as Aprilia was able to get the bike to where it needed to be for Bezzecchi to dominate on Sunday.

Looking at the average pace from Friday’s long runs at Jerez, Ducati looks good. Alex Marquez’s, in particular, is noteworthy. Across a nine-lap representative run, he averaged 1m37.154s, while a 16th tour on the medium rear tyre he was using produced a 1m37.412s. That’s an encouraging sign of the GP26’s electronic updates potentially improving tyre life, if the bike is stopping better and no longer requiring the rider to turn with the rear so much.

Last year’s race option was the medium rear. Bezzecchi did his work on Friday afternoon on the soft rear and believes it can work as a race option, as grip levels mean tyre wear isn’t excessive. Across 12 laps, he averaged 1m37.416s, while managing a 1m37.670s on a 17-lap-old soft rear. That’s impressive and suggests, despite the pace differential, the gap between Bezzecchi and Alex Marquez is not too big.

Di Giannantonio’s pace is nothing to ignore, not least given his form so far this season, but a four-lap representative stint leaves a question mark hanging over the consistency of that pace. He also only put eight laps on a medium rear, compared to 16 for Alex Marquez.

Bezzecchi has branded Alex Marquez “the favourite” because “he’s put half a second on me”, and believes the Gresini rider and Di Giannantonio are a step ahead of the rest despite making “a better start than we expected”.

“It went pretty well. It was tough because, especially with the soft tyre, this is a track that already has good grip, so some of the problems we had in the past resurfaced, and it wasn’t easy. But it definitely went a little better than expected, so come on, I’m pretty happy. Now we have to keep working hard to try and improve further.”

Pecco Bagnaia’s pace was also solid, but the same question marks persist. The Italian offered a concerning viewpoint on Thursday that the DNA of the GP25 – which he hated – and the GP26 are not that much different.

That was very visible on Friday. On several occasions, Bagnaia couldn’t get his bike to stop in the hard braking zones. At the start of Practice, he wrote off one of his bikes with a crash at Turn 1. He rallied to bag a place in Q2 in sixth overall, and got some useful long run data onto Ducati’s hard drives. If Alex Marquez’s braking improvements have come from a mental shift, it’s easy to understand why Bagnaia is still battling troubles that have plagued him well over a year.

However, he did note that the GP26 is “honest” on the front-end, so he can at least understand what set-up directions might work. He said he headed out in PR with something Alex Marquez was using, but got no information on it due to his crash.

All four Aprilias worked with the soft rear in PR, with Raul Fernandez and Martin on par with Bezzecchi’s pace. But right now, Alex Marquez and Ducati – for the first time in a season he is 42 points worse off than at the same stage last year – are the ones with the target on their back heading into the rest of the Spanish Grand Prix.

What’s going on with Marc Marquez?

The extended break between the US and Spanish races due to the war in Iran offered reigning world champion Marc Marquez crucial recovery time. The right shoulder he injured last October continued to be a problem across the opening three rounds.

Coming into the weekend, he said he was back to a physical level good enough to push on. But he still looks out of sorts as the Spanish Grand Prix begins.

His one-lap speed is fine. He was fourth overall, but over half a second adrift of the leading GP26 of Alex Marquez. His long run pace was also ok. Across a six-lap run, he averaged 1m37.429s, with a 1m37.414s coming on the 15th lap of his medium rear tyre. That’s encouraging and looks like it could potentially get him into the podium picture.

But he needs to make another step to cement that, with the reigning champion noting that his younger brother “has a better chance of winning than I do of finishing on the podium”.

Physically, Marc Marquez says he is fine, but he concedes that the fast right-handers at the end of the lap are still giving him trouble. As for the pace of Alex Marquez and Di Giannantonio on the same GP26, he simply concedes, “they’re faster”.