2025 Italian MotoGP: Marc Marquez wins sprint thriller despite start issue
Marc Marquez wins eighth sprint of 2025
Ducati’s Marc Marquez won a sprint thriller at the 2025 MotoGP Italian Grand Prix despite an issue dropping him back at the start of the 11-lap contest.
Snatching pole with a new lap record earlier on Saturday, Marc Marquez was expected to dominate the sprint race at Mugello.
But his life was made difficult when he appeared to miss the start due to an issue just prior to lights out.
Plummeting down the order, Marquez came through Turn 1 in fourth but would quickly work his way back into the lead at the start of lap four and eased away from Gresini Ducati’s Alex Marquez.
The elder Marquez brother got to the chequered flag 1.4s clear of the field to register his eighth sprint victory in nine rounds and extend his championship lead to 35 points.
Alex Marquez was his nearest challenger in second, while Pecco Bagnaia dropped a place from his starting position to grab the final spot on the podium on the sister factory team Ducati.
Marc Marquez looked to make some kind of adjustment on the left handlebar as the red lights came on just seconds before the start.
He accelerated slowly off the line and found himself shuffled back to the outer reaches of the top 10, as Pecco Bagnaia took the lead from Alex Marquez and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.
Marc Marquez quickly disposed of Quartararo in the first few corners to get back into the podium places, before the top three engaged in a tight three-wide battle on the run to Turn 1 at the start of lap two.
The elder Marquez brother tried to go through the middle of Bagnaia and Alex Marquez, but it was the latter who emerged from that skirmish leading.
The factory Ducati riders then swapped places at Turn 4, with Marc Marquez moving into second to begin his chase for the lead.
He would pass his younger brother on the run into Turn 1 at the start of lap four to take a lead he wouldn’t relinquish to the chequered flag.
Alex Marquez kept the gap at around half a second for much of the race, before throwing in the towel on the final tour to allow Marc Marquez to win by 1.441s.
Pecco Bagnaia dropped off the top two in the closing stages, but held a charging Tech3 KTM of Maverick Vinales at bay to finish third.
It marks his first sprint defeat at Mugello since the new format was introduced in 2023.
Fabio Di Giannantonio was fifth on the leading VR46 Ducati, while Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi came from 10th on the grid to sixth with slight damage on his bike after lap one contact with Pedro Acosta.
Di Giannantonio made contact with KTM’s Brad Binder at Turn 1, who crashed and took LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco with him on the first lap.
The stewards took a look at this, but deemed it a racing incident and decided no action was necessary.
Franco Morbidelli was seventh for VR46, with Trackhouse Aprilia’s Raul and Gresini’s Fermin Aldeguer taking the final points.
Quartararo faded from the early podium fight to 10th on the leading factory Yamaha, while team-mate Alex Rins was 18th after an unseen incident.
KTM’s Acosta crashed out at the end of lap one when he ran wide at the final corner to compound a miserable sprint for the Austrian manufacturer’s factory team.
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