Alex Marquez held up by Pirro: anger on track and an immediate penalty

Michele Pirro slow on the racing line, Alex Marquez forced to abort a flying lap: the Ducati tester is penalized.

Ruining a lap for your own teammate. That’s what happened in Practice between Michele Pirro and Alex Marquez, with the former slow on the line while the latter was in the middle of a flying lap, then suddenly forced to back off. The anger of the MotoGP vice-champion towards his temporary box mate—standing in for the injured Aldeguer—was obvious, and the penalty didn’t take long: three-place grid drop for Sunday’s race. Perhaps irrelevant, given that so far Pirro has been consistently at the back of the pack...

A scene we’ve seen several times in MotoGP, last year with a different protagonist. A lapse from the stand-in rider fielded by Gresini Racing for this GP, who is also continuing his testing work during this first event of the 2026 season. Fortunately for Alex Marquez, there was still plenty of time before the checkered flag, even if everyone had been pushing for a while due to the looming risk of rain that could have nullified all efforts... In the end it all worked out and Marquez secured direct Q2.

"This morning I wasn’t happy at all, then in the afternoon we found a way to improve a bit," Alex Marquez explained at the end of the day, as reported by the Gresini team. "I wasn’t calm and relaxed enough, also because of the weather conditions. We need to keep working on the setup and I have to recover a little something in terms of traction, since that was one of my strengths last year.”

“I’m not satisfied,” Michele Pirro then added. "We took a step forward compared to the test, but the track conditions and a few issues with the bike didn’t allow me to lap in 1’30, which was the goal. We’ll try again tomorrow—thanks to the team that’s working incredibly hard and showing a lot of patience with a 40-year-old,” he concluded with a joke.