A week after taking control of MotoGP's three primary title races (riders', teams', manufacturers') at Le Mans, Aprilia ceded a good chunk of said control at Barcelona - largely as a consequence of the 'friendly fire' between Raul Fernandez and Jorge Martin.

Fernandez's attack against Martin shortly after Sunday's third MotoGP start was robust, and was defended robustly, so ended with both riders in the gravel, both out of the points and both clearly seriously irritated at one another.

It also ratcheted up the angst throughout the Aprilia set-up - whether it be Aprilia chief Massimo Rivola finger-wagging at Trackhouse boss Davide Brivio, Martin shoving team manager Paolo Bonora or Martin repeatedly no-commenting about the Fernandez clash in such a fashion that left little doubt as to his ire at Fernandez.

Fernandez himself was defiant - and even accusatory - in the aftermath. Martin "picked up the bike, you can see well on the helicopter [camera], he saw it was me, he released the brake and put the lean angle again," Fernandez insisted.

"I think I didn't make a mistake. I didn't come to the corner with a super speed, I didn't come to the corner over the line.

"At Turn 5, I was super strong during the weekend. I braked later than all the [other] Aprilias and I could turn the bike. So, they know that I could make this action. It's nothing crazy by myself, I was on my line."

Fernandez's explanation might come off as ridiculous to you - certainly, Martin's good friend Aleix Espargaro saw fit to make fun of it on social media - but isn't necessarily inaccurate to what the footage showed, and was evidently a view shared by the Simon Crafar-led stewarding panel given no sanction followed.

"Legal", though, does not mean "wise" or "accepted". Fernandez believes he's in the clear, having told MotoGP.com: "I took Massimo and Davide and we watched together the images, and we saw that he [Martin] made the corner in two different moments."

Fernandez reiterated that he believes Rivola changed his view of the situation upon watching the replay. He very well might have - but Rivola's post-race comments to MotoGP.com certainly suggest he hasn't seen anything definitively exculpatory of Fernandez.

"This is the kind of thing that we don't want to see. It's true that there's, let's say, a combination of...things that could've been avoided," said Rivola, clearly picking his exact words very carefully.

"From both, maybe - I would say more from Raul, but let's say both could have done a better job.

"I think that between Aprilias we should take a bit more care, especially at the first lap, especially when you are P2 and P3.

"I think today there was a bit of a risk taken unnecessarily. We lost points, we lost points everywhere, Trackhouse lost points. The outcome is very clear - and I think we should all learn very easily and very quickly from this lesson."

Rivola also suggested there would be "a meeting all together with the four riders, to remind everybody that we have just one goal".

Only he will know for sure - but, the way these comments came across, such a meeting would be for the benefit of one. Certainly, the vibe is that Fernandez has not done his standing within Aprilia any favours here.

A relevant addition here is that Fernandez had already attempted the exact same move, likewise early in the race, on the exact same rider at the exact same corner. He pulled it off then - it looked robust-but-fair, but clearly already irked Martin then and compromised his sprint (though we never found out to what extent as he crashed out soon after).

A minor - or major, maybe? - difference then was that Fernandez's Saturday move was a counter-attack after Martin's own move at Turn 5, so was more in line with general racing expectation. His Sunday move wasn't necessarily from further back, but came as Martin himself was exploring a wider corner approach to try to set up a run on race leader Pedro Acosta, so it appeared to come as a total surprise.

Both overtaking attempts, however, were fundamentally counter-productive to Aprilia's season goals. They are incident one and two behind why Martin didn't extend his points advantage over the absent Marc Marquez at all at Barcelona - at the same time that a struggling Marco Bezzecchi didn't put up huge numbers on the other Aprilia either.

And suddenly Aprilia faces a fundamental dilemma it will have hoped that it's too quick to encounter in 2026. It's clear as it stands that it will not favour either of Bezzecchi and Martin against one another - but with the Trackhouse riders already way back in the standings, does it have cause to limit how robustly Fernandez and the also-feisty Ai Ogura (just ask Acosta) can fight with them?

This would potentially be simpler if Ogura and Fernandez were Aprilia employees. They're not - that was the original set-up, but currently it's Trackhouse that contracts the riders, so it's Trackhouse ambitions that the riders should be fully beholden to. 

Dictating what riders who aren't your riders can do wouldn't go down well with anyone. 

The alternative - losing Aprilia's first riders' title ever to a healed Marc Marquez or a lurking-in-the-background Fabio Di Giannantonio because a satellite team took points off your riders - would, however, be far harder to swallow.