Marco Bezzecchi encountered a problem at the start which affected the rest of his sprint race. Nevertheless, his result secured him third place in the championship.
Marco Bezzecchi He was expected to be the man to beat this weekend alongside Álex Márquez and Pedro Acosta. Second yesterday, he secured pole position this Saturday, his fifth of the season, and seemed a formidable opponent for the sprint race victory.
The Italian rider had a poor start, overtaken in the first corner by Álex Márquez, and then seemed to lose his way, passed by Pedro Acosta, Raúl Fernández, Fabio Quartararo, and Fabio Di Giannantonio. Sixth at the end of the first lap, he only managed to overtake Quartararo but spent the entire race in fifth place, without ever truly closing the gap to the leaders.
His performance fell short of the expectations generated by his pole position, but this can be partly explained by a problem he encountered with his front tire at the start. Then, once stuck in the pack, his soft tire didn't perform as he had anticipated when starting from the front, and he couldn't regain the same pace he had for the rest of the weekend.
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to disengage the device beforehand. I did it between turn 1 and turn 2, but even coming out of turn 2, I couldn’t accelerate as much as I wanted. That’s why I lost so many places.”, he said during his debriefing. "This problem definitely made things worse, because you can't expect the soft tire to work perfectly when you're behind so many bikes. Without this problem, it could have been better, I'll never know. But if I had to do it again, I would put the soft front tire back on."
"Having started from pole position, finishing the race like that doesn't make me very happy, but the pace is there, the confidence is there, so we'll analyze what happened at the start and prepare better for tomorrow."
However, Bezzecchi He had experienced a relatively similar scenario in Portugal last week before completely dominating Sunday's Grand Prix. So anything is still possible for him tomorrow.
Regardless of his final result, his fifth-place finish today has already secured him third place in the championship behind the Márquez brothers. A remarkable achievement for someone who joined Aprilia at the start of the year, had to adapt to the bike, and developed it partly on his own, as his teammate Jorge Martín was absent for a large part of the season.
"It's a good result, especially for the team and the factory, they deserve it. I'm also happy for myself, because last year I struggled a lot, and being back in the fight is really great. I'm very happy, I hope we'll have a good race tomorrow to celebrate.", he added.
Results of the sprint race of the 2025 MotoGP Valencia Grand Prix :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
