Davide Brivio Explains Why Trackhouse Beat Factory Aprilia

Davide Brivio believes the performance of Ai Ogura and Raul Fernandez was the decisive factor behind Trackhouse MotoGP Team outperforming the factory Aprilia Racing squad at the 2026 Assen MotoGP.

Trackhouse completed a remarkable one-two finish in both races at Assen. Fernandez won the Sprint ahead of Ogura, before the order was reversed in Sunday's Grand Prix as Ogura claimed his maiden MotoGP victory with Fernandez second. By contrast, the factory Aprilia team finished only fourth and fifth in the Sprint, then took third in the Grand Prix with Jorge Martin after Marco Bezzecchi crashed out.

Brivio insisted Trackhouse did not have any technical advantage over the factory team. According to the Italian, both Aprilia squads run the same material, share data openly and hold daily joint engineering meetings throughout the race weekend.

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"It's important to understand that we have exactly the same material and we share all the information. Our engineers have a meeting every day together, so there is full openness on everything," Brivio told Crash.net.

With the technical baseline effectively equal, Brivio believes the main difference came from how Ogura and Fernandez executed the weekend. He pointed to their speed in the final sector at Assen as a key area where both riders found an advantage.

"I think probably this weekend our riders were better. They found the way to be faster, especially in the last sector. Ai, and also Raul, were fantastic. We had an incredible and massive improvement compared to last year. I just think our riders found a way to be fast here," Brivio explained to Crash.net.

Brivio also admitted the Grand Prix one-two carried greater significance than the Sprint result. For Trackhouse, securing first and second in the main race represented a historic achievement for a young American-owned satellite team still building its identity in the MotoGP paddock.

Ogura's victory and Fernandez's second place showed that Trackhouse Aprilia is no longer merely supporting the factory project, but has become a direct competitive force in its own right. With Ogura's tyre management improving and Fernandez rediscovering front-running pace, Assen may prove to be a defining moment in the 2026 MotoGP competitive order heading toward Sachsenring.