Hit by the following bike of Fabio Di Giannantonio, Martin was left severely injured. Breaking most of his ribs and suffering complications from lung damage, it kept him out of action for a further seven rounds before a surprisingly strong<\/a> return to action at Brno – with an ultimately-resolved contract battle<\/a> with Aprilia in the midst of his recovery the last thing that both sides needed.<\/p>\n Consistently inside the top 10 on his return on a bike that had, in his absence, improved dramatically, Martin was closing in on the performances of team-mate Marco Bezzecchi when disaster struck once again in Japan six weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n Crashing out, taking Bezzechi with him<\/a>, and breaking his shoulder in the process, it meant four more weekends missed and a return only for this weekend\u2019s final round at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo.<\/p>\n In the interim, the bike has made another step forwards, too. Now not only a double race winner in the hands of Bezzecchi but also taking its first ever satellite victory thanks to Trackhouse\u2019s Raul Fernandez in Australia, it\u2019s statistically the best ever season for Aprilia in the premier class – even without the reigning world champion.<\/p>\n And, realistically, it’s unlikely that he\u2019s going to contribute further to that success at the final round given how absent he has been this year. Valencia isn\u2019t about results for Martin at this stage; instead, it\u2019s a chance to get up to race pace so that next Tuesday\u2019s all-important post-race outing on the new 2026-spec RS-GP goes a little bit more smoothly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Martin\u2019s only chance to contribute feedback to the new prototype ahead of the Sepang test next February, so it\u2019s no surprise that he\u2019s desperate to check off this race beforehand – and it means that it\u2019s going to be a weekend dedicated to regaining his confidence rather than scoring results.<\/p>\n However, that doesn\u2019t mean that his feedback from Friday morning onwards will be worthless to Aprilia\u2019s engineers. Rather, it\u2019s likely that they\u2019re going to be very keen indeed to hear what he thinks of the changes made to the bike over the past few months, particularly electronically, given the step that Bezzecchi, Fernandez, and Trackhouse rookie Ai Ogura have made since Martin\u2019s latest forced holiday.<\/p>\n And while Fernandez sat out last weekend\u2019s races at Portimao following a punishing crash on Friday morning in which both he and his bike struck the Turn 1 wall, it sounds like he should make a full enough recovery for Aprilia to see its four-rider regular line-up start out together for only the sixth time in 22 races.<\/p>\n The other rider rushing back Martin won\u2019t be the only rider rushing back into action this weekend in order to rebuild for Tuesday\u2019s test. He\u2019s been joined on the injury bench in recent weekends by Maverick Vinales, following ongoing complications<\/a> with the shoulder injury the Tech3 KTM rider first sustained in Germany all the way back in July.<\/p>\n Vinales rode on and off since then, starting the weekend in both Austria and Indonesia before pulling out yet completing races (albeit rather pointlessly) at Barcelona, Misano and Motegi. He claims that he\u2019s now closer to full fitness again too after sitting out the past three rounds – and will be hoping for a steady weekend that builds into his first run on KTM\u2019s 2026 bike at the test.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GnG_1270863_HiRes.jpg\")
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