Alex Marquez explains why he couldn’t fight for Valencia MotoGP win

Gresini’s Alex Marquez says his hopes of fighting for victory in the MotoGP Valencia Grand Prix were dashed by rear tyre issues just five laps into the 2025 finale.

The 2025 championship runner-up took a surprise sprint victory on Saturday in Valencia, having felt like he didn’t have the pace to match Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi.

This set up a duel between the pair for Sunday’s 27-lap grand prix, with eventual winner Bezzecchi and Alex Marquez breaking away from the rest of the pack early on.

However, Marquez’s pace began to drop after five laps, as he experienced a sudden loss of grip on his rear medium tyre.

He took the chequered flag in sixth, after team-mate Fermin Aldeguer passed him at the final corner on the last lap.

“We didn’t change it,” he said when asked if set-up was the problem.

“We tried a thing in the warm-up, but I didn’t really feel good.

“So, we decided to go with the same [bike] as yesterday.

“I mean, yeah, I was able to make a good start, to be quite competitive behind Marco.

“But, from lap five to seven, more or less, I started to drop so much on the rear.

“And that was the problem, a lot of vibrations on the rear, and all that. I suffered from that moment until the end.

“The last 15 laps were difficult to finish. Better that something like this happened now than in the mid-season in ’26. So, better to have this problem now to understand on Tuesday.”

Marquez added that “the first drop” on grip came “too early”, as his rear tyre hadn’t even come up to optimal working temperature.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“We need to analyse a little bit and understand, because the first drop was too early because the tyre at that moment was not at the right temperature yet.

“In the first five laps you maybe use 15% of the tyre, but no more.

“But I started in that moment to have some vibrations, some drop on the left, especially on the straight.

“But the important thing was to learn and adapt the riding style to finish the race.”