MotoGP rolls into Barcelona for round six with one point separating the Aprilia teammates at the top of the championship, a recovering Maverick Vinales preparing to return, and a fresh paddock feud between Fabio Di Giannantonio and Pedro Acosta running well into Thursday's media day.
The spark came in the closing corners at Le Mans, where Di Giannantonio sliced past Acosta on the final lap to steal fourth place. After making the move, the VR46 Ducati rider then turned his head and held a long, two-stage look across at Acosta as the pair ran out of the final corner. The KTM rider was unimpressed and made that clear in Spanish-language interviews afterwards, telling reporters that "nobody looks at me after overtaking me — I'll remember that one."
Asked about it at Catalunya, Di Giannantonio was not backing down. "I laugh quite a lot of times. I don't see a lot of comments about this thing. So, my side was just a great move, I think, for the last lap, last corner — and also for the championship at this time," he said. Pressed on whether he had spoken to Acosta since, he replied, "No, we didn't have the chance. But I don't think it's quite necessary. In case I'm here, no problem." Asked if he regretted the long look in his rival's direction, Di Giannantonio added, "If you want to do it again — okay, let's play on track. For me, it's not a problem. He's a great rider, super talented, but for me he's just like another one. So I will do it for sure to try to keep the position."
Acosta, for his part, played the situation down on the surface and then turned the temperature back up underneath it. "I'm not thinking anymore about this. It's not clever to discuss, even when we were fighting for a fourth position — you know, it's not where I want to be fighting," the Spaniard said. Asked about the state of the relationship, he summed it up neatly: "We have a professional relationship." Di Giannantonio, asked the same question, said he respected Acosta as a rider and acknowledged what the KTM youngster has done in Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP, before adding the line that has framed his entire 2026 season — "For me he's just like another one."
The back story matters. Di Giannantonio has already had a moment with Marc Marquez at Austin earlier this year, when Marquez took him out of the sprint and the pair traded glances in the pit lane during qualifying. He is the top Ducati rider in the standings as the factory team waits on Marquez's return, and he is increasingly comfortable making himself the public face of that team. Acosta privately accepted some of the blame for losing the Le Mans position, telling reporters, "I was defending the whole last lap when I had no reason to, and I gave Di Giannantonio the opportunity."
Behind the feud sits the broader title picture. Marco Bezzecchi leads Jorge Martin by a single point after Martin's third-row charge in both the Le Mans sprint and the Sunday race, his first Grand Prix win of the season. Aprilia locked out the podium for the first time in their MotoGP history at Le Mans, and Barcelona has historically rewarded the bike's ability to look after its rear tyre — exactly the strength Ai Ogura was praising about himself in the same press session.
Ogura, the first Japanese MotoGP podium finisher in 14 years, was open about both his weaknesses and his weapons going into Catalunya. "The Barcelona is a circuit that is really demanding for the tyre and you really need to look after the tyre. So it can be a good weapon," the Trackhouse Aprilia rider said. He admitted that qualifying remains a soft spot. "For sure time attack is one of our weak points still, but it's getting better. Now our main focus is the start. I never had a good start, like a perfect start, in line with the others." Asked whether his Le Mans podium had changed his mood walking into the paddock, Ogura simply said, "I didn't imagine things would feel any different."
There is one more name circling Catalunya. Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi confirmed that Marc Marquez's surgery on the fifth metatarsal in his right foot — and a separate operation on the shoulder injury he carried since Indonesia last year — had gone well, but ruled out a Barcelona return. "Mark shows again that he is a superhero and a super rider. So he did something incredible, because with his body situation I guess that nobody else was able to do what he did," Tardozzi said of Marquez's opening five rounds. The team boss declined to set a comeback date, suggesting Mugello as the most realistic target. "We have to wait. I think that is impossible so far to say — I don't know how many days or whatever. We have to wait, and so far we don't know," Tardozzi said.
With Aprilia ascendant, Marquez sidelined, Vinales preparing to return at Mugello, and a Di Giannantonio–Acosta sub-plot now bleeding into the next race, Barcelona has the look of a weekend where the title narrative could move several different ways at once.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/digiannantonio-acosta-le-mans-feud-catalan-gp-2026-motogp-aprilia). Visit for full coverage.*