2026 is underway. We have had MotoGP bikes on track for a whole 105 minutes, so we can immediately start drawing conclusions about how the remaining 21 rounds and two days will play out. Stick a pin in it, the championship is done.
This is the trouble with the off season. For two months, there is nothing, then a month of testing producing a tidal wave of rumor and speculation. Anything is possible, we tell ourselves as we try to piece together all of the clues from last year and off season testing. That, after all, is what makes it so fun. Dreams are yet to be shattered.
And so we all seize on the first piece of actual like a pack of hyenas that haven’t fed for a month, and proceed to both analyze it to death and extrapolate the results into a far future. Marco Bezzecchi topped the timesheets on the first day of 2026, and so we might as well hand him the the championship now.
You don’t need me to tell you that doing that is getting way ahead of ourselves. It is only a Friday, and it is only the first Friday of a long season, so we didn’t learn all that much more than the lessons from the tests.
Dark clouds gathering
