Sprint starts with a bang: Alex Márquez makes a mistake and takes out Di Giannantonio and Acosta!

Crash with a triple retirement in the opening corners of the MotoGP Sprint in Japan. Here’s what happened.

A chaotic start for today’s MotoGP Sprint at Motegi. A mistake by Alex Marquez proves costly for him, Fabio Di Giannantonio, and Pedro Acosta. Third on the grid, he was clearly determined to build on his great result from the last GP, but luck wasn’t on his side and he got caught up in the pile-up triggered by the Gresini rider. A Saturday Sprint KO not of his own making, while up front there’s a super Enea Bastianini provisionally 3rd behind leader Marc Marquez and Jorge Martin in 2nd, and keep an eye on Diogo Moreira too, who looked especially fired up right from the start.

-> VIDEO The first-lap Sprint crash at Motegi

As you can also see from the cover photo graphic, it was right in the first corners when the incident happened. Alex Marquez, the 2025 MotoGP runner-up, is enduring a really tough season, between injuries and a few mistakes. Like this one: he’s the one who set off the chain reaction that led to the immediate retirement of brand-mate Fabio Di Giannantonio and, we could say, of their “future” brand too, KTM, with its current reference rider. Pedro Acosta certainly wouldn’t have been a mere spectator in this Sprint: third in qualifying was a launchpad to shine, especially to erase the mistake he made in the Austrian GP when he was comfortably in the lead. All three will have a chance to bounce back in tomorrow’s full race; we’ll see how they fare and, above all, whether the KTM Spaniard can once again give Aprilia and Ducati—the two benchmark manufacturers of this 2026 MotoGP World Championship—a hard time. Let’s hope so: the more varied the on-track battle, the better.

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