Marco Bezzecchi delivered when it mattered at Valencia, taking pole position with a record-breaking 1m28.809s in the closest qualifying session of the season.
The Aprilia rider recovered from an error-strewn opening run to lead a top five split by just 0.096s.
Q1 had set the tone for a close fight for the final pole position of the season earlier.
Raul Fernandez and Johann Zarco progressed, while Pecco Bagnaia’s session and his hopes for a confidence-building end to the season unraveled completely.
A minor deficit of 0.002s to Zarco briefly kept him in contention for a spot in Q2, but Binder’s improvement, the South African himself missing Q2 later on, pushed Bagnaia out of the top two.
The situation collapsed when his Ducati rolled to a stop with a technical issue, leaving the Italian a dismal sixteenth on the grid at a circuit where overtaking is notoriously limited.
⚠️ @PeccoBagnaia stops trackside! #ValenciaGP 🏁 pic.twitter.com/HekADI6oDx
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) November 15, 2025
The way Bagnaia’s Q1 ended, Bezzecchi’s Q2 started. Following Fermin Aldeguer on his first run out of the box, the Italian was left with some hard work to do, a big shake of the bike, leaving him to take a detour through the gravel trap.
While other riders put in their first lap times, Bezzecchi’s first run ended prematurely, leaving him a provisional ninth as he returned to the pits.
Bez goes off-roading after a HUGE moment 😱#ValenciaGP 🏁 pic.twitter.com/uuKuCkBrGh
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) November 15, 2025
Acosta posted the first benchmark before Alex Marquez fired in the first 1:28 of the weekend, edging close to the 2023 all-time lap record set by Maverick Vinales.
Fabio Quartararo continued his pattern of extracting every last bit of performance from the Yamaha, moving up into P3.
The Frenchman later didn’t find more time and ended his Q2 relatively early, not going for a time attack in the final minutes of the session.
Bezzecchi, however, did. With pressure building from a provisional ninth on the grid – certainly not enough to fight for a victory in either the sprint or the race – he unleashed a superb lap that sent his Aprilia to pole position, setting a new outright record of 1:28.809.
The final minutes became a rotating front row. Acosta jumped to second. Moments later, Marquez and di Giannantonio displaced the KTM rider, compressing the front of the order even further, the gap across the top five dipping under a tenth of a second.
When the flag fell, nobody had overturned Bezzecchi’s reference; his rebound from early mistakes secured him back-to-back pole positions to close the season.
Alex Marquez ended 0.026s adrift in second, with di Giannantonio a further 0.018s behind. Raul Fernandez’s strong charge coming out of Q1 placed him fourth, two hundredths up on Acosta.
Quartararo followed in sixth with Morbidelli, Miller, Aldeguer, and Mir completing the top ten – in that order.
