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‘Scary moment’: Winner’s error leads to wild 315km/h duel, sacked Aussie makes a stand – MotoGP Talking Points Marco Bezzecchi and Marc Marquez were side-by-side for hundreds of metres at north of 315km/h, separated by the width of a credit card, when the Italian shot the Spaniard a sideways glance. Every MotoGP qualifying, practice and race LIVE and ad-break free from lights out to the chequered flag. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today > When was Marquez going to brake, Bezzecchi thought? Can I brake later? What will happen if I do? It was lap six of Sunday’s Aragon Grand Prix where Marquez – unusually for him, not in the lead at a track that history has shown to be one of his most imposing – ambushed race-leader Bezzecchi down the inside of the slow left-handed Turn 15, the bikes straightening up to traverse Aragon’s longest straight, a 968-metre blast to the last sequence of corners to complete the lap. MORE MOTOGP NEWS RACE REPORT Marquez makes it an Aragon hat-trick after heated battle ADELAIDE UNVEILED A first look at the street circuit set to host MotoGP in 2027 Bezzecchi took the inside line, Marquez the middle of the track, and the Aprilia and Ducati engaged in a drag race to the penultimate corner, their bikes drifting towards one another like magnets before briefly moving apart, then coming back together again. How they never clattered into one another is anyone’s guess. Including both riders. “We had an amazing battle with the aerodynamic effect, the bikes were moving and all the straight I was like ‘where is he going to brake?,” Bezzecchi laughed afterwards “It was strange. I wanted to try to cross the line in Turn 15 when he passed me … his bike accelerated really well and my bike [did] too. It was a strange feeling because with the air, I was going close to him but I didn’t want to go too close.” Marquez concurred. “Even on the bike, it was a very strange moment because with all of the aerodynamics, there was one moment there where our bikes were sucking towards each other,” Marquez added. “I tried to go on the right side, but my bike [was being sucked] towards his and his towards mine. There was some small wheelie in sixth gear, so it was a scary moment.” Scary, yes; it was also the moment that was the first step in Marquez winning at Aragon for the third straight year, and the eighth time in all in MotoGP. KTM’s Pedro Acosta, in third place and with a front-row seat for the Marquez/Bezzecchi battle, opportunistically settled into second as Bezzecchi ran wide, then ran in Marquez’s wheel tracks for the next seven laps. Marquez, though, had time to execute his next plan. At the track where he’s been more dominant over the years than any circuit bar the Sachsenring in Germany, where he’s won 10 times in MotoGP, Marquez kept his cool, Acosta behind him, and bided his time. On lap 13, he uncorked a lap of 1min 46.910secs that was the fastest to that point of the race, and then set three more laps in a row in that same 1:46 bracket. Nobody else could get out of the 1:47s. A lead that was two-tenths of a second swelled to 1.5secs, and the only intrigue was what his final winning margin would be. “I tried to manage the tyres for most of the race, and I calculated when there remained 10 laps, if I’m in the front, then do a step – and that’s what I did,” Marquez said. “Open a gap, and then manage.” At the chequered flag after 23 laps, Marquez was 1.754secs to the good to wrap up a third straight season of winning both the sprint and Grand Prix at Aragon, extending Ducati’s mastery at the remote Spanish circuit to five successive years. On a weekend where championship leader Jorge Martin (Aprilia) was a subdued fifth in both races – and fellow championship protagonists Fabio Di Giannantonio (seventh), Raul Fernandez (who retired with a gearbox issue) and Ai Ogura (absent with a left hand injury from a training accident after the British GP) all hurt their own title aspirations – Marquez jumped two places in the standings to second, just 19 points adrift of Martin. At his three strongest tracks since returning from a two-race absence for right shoulder surgery in May – Balaton Park in Hungary, the Sachsenring in Germany and at Aragon – Marquez has taken the maximum 37 points on offer each weekend. With nine rounds remaining – which could become eight if November’s Qatar Grand Prix, postponed from April, ends up being cancelled with no replacement – Marquez knows what he has to do. “If we want to have a chance to fight for the championship, in good circuits for us we cannot lose points,” he said. “It’s what we did this weekend. It was a good circuit, we achieved the best, even Martin struggled a bit this weekend. But I believe Martin and Marco [Bezzecchi] will be very fast this last part of the season.” ‘BIG MISTAKE’: MARQUEZ ERROR SETS UP PODIUM BATTLE That Marquez had to chase Bezzecchi and was chased so hard by Acosta at a circuit where he typically runs and hides was highly unusual for Aragon, the track where Marquez got back to his winning ways in his first season with Ducati in 2024, snapping a 1043-day drought that went back to his injury-afflicted final seasons at Honda. MORE MOTOGP NEWS SPRINT REPORT Spaniard’s Aragon stronghold continues with Saturday success MILLER WAVES GOODBYE Aussie out at Yamaha as MotoGP journey ends Marquez, beaten by Bezzecchi to pole position on Saturday by just 0.089secs after the Aprilia rider set the fastest-ever lap of Aragon in qualifying (1min 44.962secs), divebombed the Italian at the first corner of Saturday’s sprint and cleared off, and aimed to do the same on Sunday as he emerged from the first turn in first place. The Spaniard, though, soon realised he’d made a mistake. Engaging his bike’s rear ride-height device as he rolled onto the grid at the end of the warm-up lap, he realised – as he lifted his bike out of the first corner, that he’d forgotten to disengage it. His Ducati low like a chopper, sparks flew as his machine touched the ground heading towards the next corner, Bezzecchi and Martin immediately re-passing him. Martin was dispatched with a robust move before the first lap was completed, but Bezzecchi was already six-tenths of a second up the road. It took six laps – and that side-by-side moment down the back straight – to make up for his self-admitted brain fade. “It’s always difficult, but it was more difficult because I did a big mistake on the start when I didn’t remember to disactivate the rear device,” Marquez said. “When I got out from turn one and I was leading the race, I understand that now was the time to not crash and just not lose a lot of positions, then rebuild the race.” While Marquez had 37 reasons to smile in the post-race wash-up, Acosta and Bezzecchi had reasons to find silver linings from their losses. Acosta, fourth in the sprint a day previously, continues to drag remarkable performances out of a KTM machine that none of his stablemates can come close to; while his second place was the eighth time he’s come as close as possible to snapping his winless MotoGP drought, Acosta was six places and 24 seconds ahead of the next-best KTM (Enea Bastianini, eighth) after 23 laps. After 13 rounds, he’s the only non-Aprilia or Ducati rider inside the top 10 in the standings, his 189 points propelling him to sixth overall. “I was pushing a lot the team to make changes to improve the weekend, and taking this way of risk, we are improving,” he said. “KTM is giving everything they have and they are much more in my corner, trying to improve the package that we have. We are coming closer to the guys [at the front] even if we are not able to win. So, we have to be happy.” Bezzecchi, who has taken back-to-back third-place results in both the sprints and Grands Prix at Silverstone and Aragon as he continues to recover from left knee surgery after his German Grand Prix qualifying crash in July, was equally satisfied. “Third was the maximum I could do in both races,” he said. “In Silverstone, I didn’t expect at all the podium, but honestly also here. It’s a track where historically we’ve been struggling, and Aprilia was never really competitive. These two weekends have been fantastic for me, but I now I have to be a bit more in shape because to fight with these guys, you need to be perfect.” MILLER SHINES FOR YAMAHA AFTER SACKING Jack Miller responded to being let go by Yamaha for 2027 in the lead-up to Aragon with one of his strongest weekends of a difficult season, the Australian finishing as the leading Yamaha in 11th place after spending 16 of the 23 laps inside the top 10. The 31-year-old, who was announced as making way for Spanish Moto2 front-runner Izan Guevara at Pramac Yamaha next season, was Yamaha’s shining light on what was another dismal weekend for the Japanese brand at Aragon, Miller its best performer in qualifying (13th), Saturday’s sprint race (a season-best 10th, missing the points by 0.145secs) and in Sunday’s Grand Prix, with stablemates Alex Rins (13th), Fabio Quartararo (18th) and teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu, who crashed out on lap 21, trailing him all weekend. Miller was ninth with eight laps to go and within reach of his season-best finish of eighth in Hungary in June, but conceded places to KTM riders Enea Bastianini (on lap 16) and former teammate Brad Binder on the penultimate lap as he finished 27.206secs behind race-winner Marquez. “A decent weekend in general, and I gave everything I had in that race,” Miller said. “I conceded places to the KTM’s there at the end … I tried to give them as much of a hard time as possible, but I was kind of fighting with my hands behind my back. “Once you lose the edge [grip of the tyre], which is our only strong point at the minute, it gets tough. The bike is working pretty good and I can’t fault it in the corners … we’re just losing too much on the straights, and we know that – you can’t do much about it, so there’s no point in complaining. “I was really happy with my pace and didn’t make any mistakes. I had Enea [Bastianini] come past and I tried to make it as difficult as possible by braking late, but in the end he passed me halfway down the back straight and cut it really tight into the last corner, and you can’t do much more.”