Analysis: Why Ai Ogura's speed is a boost for Aprilia’s missing MotoGP champion

Ai Ogura is already firmly leading the rankings for being MotoGP’s coolest character in 2025. After a debut grand prix in Thailand last weekend in which he took the best rookie first race result since 2013, he faced the media and spoke just 186 words to sum up a maiden outing most young riders would have sold their soul for.

Trackhouse Racing prides itself on pushing the boundaries in motorsport, but even its shock signing of Ogura last summer on a two-year deal raised a few eyebrows. It’s not that Ogura was doing badly at that point, but there were several other - arguably bigger - names in the hunt for the second satellite Aprilia that made his promotion a surprise. 

That contract has aged beautifully, however, with Ogura going on to win the Moto2 crown last year ahead of his MotoGP debut. But Trackhouse didn’t merely take a punt - something stood out, as Davide Brivio told Crash.net last November.

“When you watch him on track, the way how he picks up the bike, how he’s braking; there’s something there,” Brivio said. “Also, we have somebody going around the track, looking, giving advice. So, as I say, we saw something and we took this decision. So, we’re happy to have him with us. We’re quite excited.”

Ai Ogura thrilled at Thailand MotoGP

The Thai GP weekend justified that excitement. Ogura quietly impressed a few paddock onlookers when he put in a race simulation during the Sepang shakedown. When the season kicked off in Thailand, he was top Aprilia rider in qualifying, the sprint and the grand prix.

He was just 0.352s from pole in fifth on the grid, while he shadowed Pecco Bagnaia on the factory Ducati for the entirety of the sprint; at the chequered flag, Ogura was under a second adrift in fourth. Then in the grand prix he was comfortably top non-Ducati in fifth, 5.176s from race winner Marc Marquez and over seven seconds ahead of factory Aprilia stablemate Marco Bezzecchi - who didn’t disgrace himself at all in his debut with the brand.

Ogura’s fifth in the 2025 Thai GP is the best debutant result for a rookie since 2013, when Marquez put his factory Honda onto the podium. In that time, Ogura has been the only rider since to even break the top five, and that is against some top names.

Ogura impressed in a number of ways over his first grand prix weekend, chiefly in his methodical approach: “After the sprint, I had a little conversation with my crew that it was a sprint, only 13 laps and the main race will be a little bit more complicated. But even with the main race distance, we were still there. So, I’m happy.”

His mindset, in many ways, wasn’t much different to how Pedro Acosta came into his first few grands prix last season with KTM. But where Acosta went all out and got as high as the podium places in the 2024 Qatar GP before fading, Ogura’s steady approach proved more lucrative - and, in some ways, more promising longer-term.

Why Jorge Martin’s confidence should be boosted by this

The Japanese rider’s consistency was something that also caught the eye. He noted that the “tyres dropped like I expected”, though admitted “the last six, seven laps were difficult to manage”. Looking at his average pace across grand prix distance, he was only 0.249s per lap slower than Marc Marquez, while Ogura was 0.277s per lap quicker than Bezzecchi. To the latter’s credit, though, he had to do a bit of fighting from eighth on the grid.

Aprilia came away from the opening round of the year sitting second again in the constructors’ standings, five points clear of 2024 runner-up KTM. It was a welcome conclusion to a difficult period for the Italian marque.

Missing reigning champion and flagship signing Jorge Martin since the early stages of day one of pre-season testing, Aprilia was dealt another blow when the Spaniard suffered a nasty wrist fracture in a training incident on the Monday before he was due to travel to Buriram.

Martin is out for the upcoming Argentina GP and his participation beyond that remains unclear. While Aprilia didn’t exactly come to 2025 with the goal of winning the world title, Martin’s injury woes threatened its efforts to build its way closer to the front.

The form of Ogura and Bezzecchi, however, is something tangible for Aprilia to hold onto. But it’s also something to give Martin some solace that his delayed adaptation to the RS-GP may not be as tall a task as only having 90 laps on it when he eventually does go racing as initially feared.

In all of Aprilia’s prior visits to Buriram, its best result was a seventh. At a typically difficult track for the bike, it managed to get two bikes into the top six on legitimate pace. That Bezzecchi’s struggles in time attack trim right now resigned him only to eighth, as well as Ogura’s rookie run to fifth, is something which suggests the RS-GP has retained its rider-friendliness while also improving on some big weak points.

The major tyre wear issues Aprilia battled in the second half of last year didn’t appear to materialise as dramatically in the Thai GP, while it seems the days of the bike cooking its riders in extreme temperatures is finally over.

The first round of a season taking place at the same track testing concluded always muddies the waters somewhat in terms of the true pecking order. But Aprilia’s new faces - one of whom as fresh as it gets - proved too quick for the Thai GP to merely have been a fluke.

Martin will struggle to get to that level from the off once he’s back, but the rapid form of rookie Ogura, as well as Bezzecchi, suggests it won’t take the reigning champion too long…