Alex Marquez dominates the Valencia Sprint; Honda disaster

There’s no contest in the Saturday race at Valencia. Alex Marquez makes the best launch, then breaks away and flies off, taking the win without any trouble. Pedro Acosta tries at the start but can’t keep the pace, his appointment with victory postponed again. Marco Bezzecchi, on the other hand, may have paid dearly for switching from hard to soft on the front, but the good news is he has secured 3rd overall behind the Marquez brothers: the 2025 MotoGP world podium is locked in. Double disaster for Honda caused by a mistake from Mir, who immediately tried to apologize to the blameless Marini, taken out in this race. And Bagnaia today goes no further than 14th... Report and standings.

Different tire choices for this Saturday sprint race in Valencia, with no shortage of last-second changes. Originally, there was a prevalence of hards on the front with the exception of Somkiat Chantra, while at the rear almost everyone chose the soft, except Johann Zarco and Jorge Martin who had the medium. At the actual start there are changes: Bezzecchi, Raul Fernandez, Zarco, Ogura, Aleix Espargaro removed the hard front and switched to the soft. The previously mentioned rear compounds remain unchanged.

Poleman Bezzecchi is soundly outfoxed, and not only by Alex Marquez and Pedro Acosta, who muscled their way to the front of the race. The Aprilia standard-bearer suffers multiple overtakes on the first lap, finding himself in 6th place! Super launch by Martin, the rider who gains the most off the line, +6 to 11th place. But he then makes a major mistake with a long off-track excursion... Huge Miller-Aldeguer scare, with the Gresini rookie losing a front winglet: on lap 5 of 13, Miller is penalized with a three-position drop in the race for the contact. Previously on the record as well a full-on Honda HRC mess, with Mir making a mistake and wiping out teammate Marini. And for Miller the penalty becomes heavier, since he doesn’t yield positions: here comes a Long Lap Penalty. What’s more than clear anyway is that there’s only one dominator: Alex Marquez is unstoppable, a rival-free triumph in the Valencia sprint.