Marco Bezzecchi: “Fun” Valencia pole follows “early mistake”
Marco Bezzecchi fights back from an early error to hand Aprilia a close final MotoGP pole position of the 2025 season.
Marco Bezzecchi began Qualifying 2 for the Valencia MotoGP season finale with a mistake at Turn 2, sending him off track and down to ninth as the final run began.
No rider has ever won a Valencia ‘MotoGP’ race starting from lower than the second row, but the Aprilia star more than made amends for the early error by leaping to pole with a new lap record.
“I had a lot of fun, especially obviously in the second time attack,” Bezzecchi said in parc ferme. “In the first, I made an early mistake, and I was a bit too nervous.
“I tried to calm myself down a little bit and focus just on riding well, and the bike worked perfectly, obviously. I’m super happy because the boys made a very good job.
“Now we can focus on the Sprint and on the GP for tomorrow. The gap between all the riders is super close. So it will be tough, but we can enjoy. Hopefully, I can make a good start and fight with the best.”
Bezzecchi, on course to confirm third in the world championship behind Marc and Alex Marquez, finished just 0.026s ahead of the Gresini rider.
“Not 100%!” Alex admitted, when asked about his chances of fighting for victory this afternoon. “
It's not like Portimao where we saw that we have the opportunity. Here, still we are missing, from the grip, traction, we are losing quite a lot.
“But we'll try in the sprint to give our best. We'll see which one is the tyre choice also on the rear [soft or medium], because it will be quite interesting.
“The track is not super fast, not super clean, and it's difficult to understand well where the traction is.
“So, we need to learn from the fastest guys. I think at the moment that’s Marco and… in Ducati it’s Morbidelli, who is quite impressive on the rhythm. So we'll try to give our best and do not make mistakes.”
But it was Morbidelli’s VR46 team-mate Fabio di Giannantonio who will complete the front row, lapping just 0.044s from Bezzecchi.
“I said yesterday that the main goal was to achieve a great result in qualifying, and this morning my only thought was, QP, QP, QP, QP, a great lap!” di Giannantonio said.
“At the end, I've done an amazing lap because a 28.8 is a great time. I’m super happy. We worked really well this weekend. So, the feeling is definitely there.
“I'm enjoying a lot riding the bike. So we start from the front row. Let's see what the future holds for us.”
Morbidelli was left in seventh, with Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia), Pedro Acosta (KTM) and Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) forming row two of the grid.
Francesco Bagnaia’s remote chances of denying Bezzecchi of third in the world championship look to have ended with 16th, after a technical issue in Qualifying 1.
The Italian is now also in danger of losing fourth in the world championship to Acosta, currently just three points behind.
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