The road to Marc Marquez’s eighth MotoGP title – seen by many in the sport as a formality in the final year of the 1000cc regulations before the shift to 850cc machinery in 2027 – has hit a pothole, with the star Spaniard’s opening three races of the 2026 season not boding well for his championship defence, and needing a numerical comeback that he’s never previously achieved.

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That’s the key takeaway after the 33-year-old laboured through a loud – for drama – and quiet – for results – three days at his beloved Circuit of the Americas last weekend, where the seven-time Grand Prix of the Americas winner qualified just sixth before finishing 17th in the sprint and fifth in the Grand Prix proper to slip to fifth in the world championship standings.

Elsewhere in Texas, an ex-Marquez teammate continued a torrid run of crashes and non-finishes that couldn’t be timed worse with contracts for 2027 up for grabs, while a former giant is looking to load up with two more bikes for the first year of the biggest regulation shake-up in the sport for well over a decade.

There’s that and more in MotoGP Pit Talk, your news wrap of the stories behind the headlines ahead of the next round at Jerez in Spain from April 24-26.

Marquez takes out Diggia in opening lap | 00:23

MARQUEZ TAKES THE BLAME AS DEFICIT REACHES UNCHARTED TERRITORY

Marc Marquez has pointed the finger at himself – not his Ducati GP26 machine – after a fraught weekend in Austin, a circuit where he took his maiden MotoGP win in 2013 and has barely stopped winning since, save for self-inflicted wounds.

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The Spaniard won every MotoGP race at COTA from 2013-18, then crashed from the lead in 2019, 2024 and 2025 after perhaps his most surprising success on US soil, when he won in 2021 as he was recovering from yet another surgery on his right shoulder damaged by his career-defining crash in the opening round of 2020 at Jerez.

Last weekend in Texas, Marquez was lucky to escape relatively unscathed from a monstrous 190km/h crash in Friday practice.

He then crashed into the path of fellow Ducati rider and pole-sitter Fabio Di Giannantonio in Saturday’s sprint and finished last, and was issued a long-lap penalty for Sunday’s 20-lap Grand Prix for causing the collision, which he admitted fault for.

Dropping to 11th after serving his penalty in the race, Marquez recovered to fifth after winning a lengthy scrap against KTM’s Enea Bastianini and factory Ducati teammate Francesco Bagnaia.

While Aprilia, with Marco Bezzecchi having won the past five Grands Prix while leading every lap, has emerged as the bike to beat, Marquez says it’s his body – still recovering from right shoulder surgery following last year’s season-ending crash in the Indonesian Grand Prix in October – that is holding him back, not his machinery.

“I’m missing … myself is missing, not the bike,” he said after the race.

“In the first laps when the tyres are new, the bike becomes more aggressive and I can’t ride at the moment.”

“I need to understand how to improve the first laps. I don’t feel well on the bike. It looks like I get used to a position on the bike, not a natural position, and then I’m just riding. I’m still fast, but I cannot make the difference.”

Marquez has scored fewer points than the 45 he’s earned this season – where he has just one win, from the sprint race in Brazil – only once after three rounds in the seven previous seasons where he’s won the MotoGP title, and has never been behind the championship leader by a bigger margin at this stage of a title-winning campaign.

Marquez after opening three rounds, championship seasons vs 2026

2013: 61 points, led standings by 3 points, won title by 4 points

2014: 75 points, led standings by 19 points, won title by 67 points

2016: 82 points, led standings by 24 points, won title by 49 points

2017: 38 points, third in standings (trailed Rossi by 18 points), won title by 37 points

2018: 45 points, second in standings (trailed Dovizioso by 1 point), won title by 76 points

2019: 45 points, fourth in standings (trailed Dovizioso by 9 points), won title by 151 points

2025*: 86 points, second in standings (trailed A. Marquez by 1 point), won title by 78 points

2026**: 45 points, fifth in standings, trails leader (Bezzecchi) by 36 points

(* – includes sprint races, ** current season)

Speaking after the Texas race to Sky Italia, Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi admitted his star rider is less than fully fit, but added the manufacturer needs to lift its performance.

“If you ask me for a percentage, I can’t say, but I’m sure he’s not in good shape,” Tardozzi said.

“Unfortunately what happened in Indonesia is still having consequences. He’s not back to normal yet.

“There are still 19 [Grand Prix] races left so nothing is lost, even if it seems like we’re playing catch-up right now. Aprilia has made a huge leap, hats off to them. But we have a chance to get back into the championship.

“We expect something from the engineers, we need to work on it and hope to bring something to the table as early as Jerez.”

Bezzecchi’s white-hot form – and Marquez’s lingering injury woes – have combined to change the face of the first three rounds of 2026. (MotoGP Press)Source: Supplied

HONDA LOADS UP FOR 2027 SERIES REBOOT

With the 2027 rule changes front of mind – and with 18 riders on this year’s grid not having announced contracts for next season – Honda is moving to expand its presence on the grid, with reports from Europe linking the Tech3 team owned by former F1 team boss and cult hero Guenther Steiner to the Japanese manufacturer to expand Honda’s presence to six bikes next year.

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Tech3, which was purchased by a group led by Steiner from team founder and paddock stalwart Herve Poncharal last season, currently runs KTM machines for Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales, but a report from motorsport.com’s Oriol Puigdemont on Wednesday (AEDT) indicated Tech3 is looking to switch to Honda machinery for next season.

Honda, which downsized to four bikes from 2019, has largely been in the MotoGP wilderness since Marquez won his fourth title in succession for the Japanese brand in 2019, his season-ending injury the following year kicking off a barren run that has seen Honda win just five races in the past six years.

Honda, which explored options with the Trackhouse Racing team that currently uses Aprilia machinery, and Gresini Racing (Ducati) for next year, is “gaining momentum” on an alliance with Tech3, Puigdemont writes.

“[Tech3] has been considering a potential change of bike supplier for some time, given the uncertainty surrounding KTM’s future plans under Bajaj, the Indian group that acquired the Austrian company [in 2025],” the report says.

“Expanding to six bikes instead of four would allow Honda far greater flexibility in managing its rider roster. Motorsport.com understands that the only piece already locked in place is Fabio Quartararo, who would take one of the two seats in the factory team. That would mean Joan Mir or Luca Marini, or possibly both, would have to vacate their current positions.”

Colombian rising star David Alonso, the 2024 Moto3 champion with a junior CV that rivals Marquez’s and who has already won a race in Moto2 at 19 years of age, is likely to graduate to MotoGP next year if Honda expands to six bikes.

Steiner’s Tech3 team, which took a sprint podium with Enea Bastianini in Austin, could switch to Honda for 2027. (Red Bull KTM Tech3)Source: Supplied

‘ZERO REGRETS’ FOR CRASH MAGNET AFTER LATEST BLUNDER

Joan Mir, the 2020 MotoGP champion, was unrepentant in the US after crashing out for the fifth time in six starts across sprints and Grands Prix this season, a podium in the Texas sprint race going begging after he fell on the final lap.

The factory Honda rider – who had a grid-high 19 non-finishes last year from 42 starts – was running fourth in the Austin sprint behind KTM’s Pedro Acosta before falling at the first corner of the final lap.

After finishing third, Acosta was penalised eight seconds after the race for failing to meet MotoGP’s minimum tyre pressure regulations, dropping him to eighth place and promoting fellow KTM rider Bastianini, nine-tenths of a second behind Mir on the penultimate lap before the Spaniard’s spill, to an unlikely podium.

Mir remounted to finish 15th in the sprint, then crashed out of sixth place on the sixth lap of Sunday’s 20-lap Grand Prix. Since finishing seventh in the opening sprint of the season in Thailand, the all-or-nothing 28-year-old Spaniard has crashed out of every race he’s started.

Mir has followed a crash-strewn 2025 season with even more costly spills in the first three rounds of this season. (Photo by WILLIAM WEST/AFP)Source: AFP

“A bit of a consequence of just being on the limit of the bike,” Mir explained after the race, which was – remarkably – his 35th non-finish in 59 starts since joining the factory Honda team as Marquez’s teammate in 2023.

“As you can imagine, I’m disappointed. In these three races we’ve always shown good potential and to be consistently in that top five, but we are not ready for that yet.

“I was in a position this weekend to go to attack mode, not defensive mode. I was pushing, and when you push at 150 per cent these things can happen. So, zero regrets. Just learn the lesson, learn from the mistakes.”

Last year, Mir crashed 22 times across the 22 rounds, with fellow Honda rider Johann Zarco (28) leading the table no MotoGP rider wants to top.