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Ogura after jumping to second in the World Championship standings: “A better Sunday than expected”

Thanks to consistently good results, Assen winner Ai Ogura has made a leap up the World Championship standings at the MotoGP Grand Prix at the Sachsenring – partly due to the Aprilia works team’s poor performance.

MotoGP

12.07.2026 - 16:07

This article is an automatically generated English version. The original article was published in German.

Nach Platz 2 jetzt auch in der WM-Tabelle Zweiter: Ai Ogura
© Gold and Goose

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Before the start of the season, critical voices dominated, but the World Championship rounds so far have shown that the rule changes are delivering exactly what was hoped for: excitement right up to the final lap.

With his victory at the Assen Grand Prix, Ai Ogura has firmly established himself as a World Championship contender. A position the Trackhouse rider further cemented in the points table on Sunday at the Sachsenring with a second-place finish: This was the fifth time in the last six races that the Japanese rider had finished in the top two – although this was made easier at the Sachsenring by the absence of Marco Bezzecchi due to injury.

The early retirement of Fabio Di Giannantonio, who was third in the World Championship standings before the start, played a minor role: Ogura had already left the VR46 rider behind at the start. The former Moto2 world champion pulled off the decisive manoeuvre to secure second place on lap 25, when he managed to get the better of his Trackhouse team-mate Raul Fernandez: “Getting past Raul was difficult, but I managed it. Fortunately, we were able to stay fast enough right up to the finish line. I wasn’t sure myself whether choosing the medium tyre was the right decision. But it worked well – the performance held up well over the distance.” Ogura grinned: “Apart from that: if you finish second behind Marc, it’s always a top result.”

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The Japanese rider is regarded as a specialist at making up places towards the end of a race. During the podium ceremony, the 25-year-old hinted that he hadn’t expected a podium finish in the Grand Prix. In the sprint race the previous day, the rider with number 79 had managed fourth place: “That was a better result this Sunday than we could have hoped for.” This meant that, for the fifth race in a row, both Trackhouse Team riders finished ahead of the Aprilia factory riders. Ogura added: “We can take a few things from this Grand Prix to apply to the next races. I’m very satisfied.”

The Tokyo-born rider trails his Aprilia team-mate Jorge Martin by 14 World Championship points ahead of the summer break, whilst Ogura holds a 4-point lead over Sachsenring double winner Marc Marquez following the German round. The top five in the World Championship are all within 24 points of one another.

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