After the faux-pas that was his crash in Austin, Marc Marquez is back on the top step of the podium and makes it a perfect weekend at the Qatar Grand Prix.
Taking the holeshot off the start, the race could have easily turned sour for the championship leader when his brother Alex made contact on the exit of turn 1 leaving the older Marquez brother missing a rear wing of his Ducati GP25 and forced to give up the lead of the race to Franco Morbidelli.
The Italian looked set for a runaway race win and quickly grew a one-second lead while Marquez adjusted to his damaged bike.
However, as the race started to head towards halfway done, Morbidelli paid the price for pushing as much as he did in the early laps.
With the likes of Marquez, Vinales and Bagnaia – who finished the race in that order – ramping up the pace towards the end, the VR46 top runner quickly dropped outside the posium positions and barely escaped a big fight for 4th with Johann Zarco and Fermin Aldeguer.
Finishing the weekend 6th, the 20-year-old beat his teammate Alex Marquez by 2.2 seconds across the line after the latter was handed a long lap penalty following a massive shunt on Fabio di Giannantonio.
Franky leads by one second! And @alexmarquez73 is in the eye of the storm again, making contact with @FabioDiggia49 now 💥😱#QatarGP 🇶🇦 pic.twitter.com/QFJKxmYwox
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) April 13, 2025
The Italian will be furious after showing unbelievable race pace later down the line. A race win was on the cards for di Giannantonio.
Fabio Quartararo led the charge for Yamaha in 8th finishing the race ahead of Pedro Acosta and Aprilia’s best Marco Bezzecchi.
Following several crashes by other riders, Luca Marini, Enea Bastianini, Alex Rins, Brad Binder and Ai Ogura rounded out the points finishing positions.
As of time of writing of this, Maverick Vinales is under investigation for tyre pressure infringement. Should he be found running illegal pressures, race direction will hand hima 16-second penalty.
