Winner’s belated stunner; Aussie’s bike ‘pumping like mad’ as star faces five-year low – Talking Pts
When Marco Bezzecchi does what Marco Bezzecchi did in Sunday’s Portuguese Grand Prix, it’s only natural to ask questions.
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How, you ponder, does it take a rider with the Italian’s obvious ceiling more than half a season to score a second victory of his first campaign with Aprilia?
How has it taken nearly two months, since Bezzecchi finished second to Ducati’s world champion Marc Marquez at Misano and in a period where he’s comfortably been the sport’s most impressive rider over a six-round span, for the 26-year-old to finally win again?
And what, given Sunday was Aprilia’s third win of a season where the Italian brand has got next-to nothing out of the rider it broke the bank for during last season’s contract madness, could Aprilia achieve next year in the final season of a regulation set before MotoGP’s big reboot scheduled for 2027?
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Sunday’s win by Bezzecchi in the Portuguese Grand Prix was one of contradictions.
The Italian became the sixth different winner in the past six Grands Prix to add unforeseen variety to a world championship season where Marquez was so dominant that he had the title wrapped up with five rounds to go before he was injured in Indonesia and ruled out for the rest of 2025.
Portimao, site of the penultimate round of 2025 after being the second round last season, turned out one of the season’s most soporific Grands Prix at a track that may not be the best on the calendar, but comes mighty close with its swoops and sweeps through the undulating terrain.
After Saturday’s sprint race – where race-winner Alex Marquez (Ducati), KTM’s Pedro Acosta and Bezzecchi all flashed across the line within 0.6secs of one another after 12 breathless laps – Sunday’s 25-lap battle was one in name only.
Bezzecchi was simply too good for any drama whatsoever.
From pole, he led into the first corner, then took advantage as Marquez and Acosta briefly reprised their thrill-a-minute fight from 24 hours previously and tripped one another up to allow him to escape.
By half-distance, Bezzecchi’s lead nudged two seconds, an eternity in MotoGP terms. He doubled that with five laps left as he ticked off laps in the 1min 38sec bracket for fun. His final margin was 2.583secs after he throttled off, relatively speaking, to soak his fifth MotoGP victory in.
Bezzecchi’s second 2025 win was a belated one given he was just edged by Marc Marquez – no disgrace there – at Misano in September, crashed and took Marquez with him when he had pace to burn in Mandalika two rounds later, then finished third in Australia after he’d won the Phillip Island sprint race only because he had to serve two long-lap penalties for ending Marquez’s season in Indonesia.
Sunday’s win was Bezzecchi’s first since Silverstone in May, and all-but secured third place in this year’s world championship after Ducati rival Francesco Bagnaia crashed out while running outside of the podium places.
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It was a display of punishing pace that Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola pointed to when speaking to Fox Sports’ ‘Pit Talk’ podcast at the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island; back in 2024, when Bezzecchi was signed to ostensibly be the number two rider at Aprilia next to world champion Jorge Martin, the team boss joked that he hoped he’d inked a deal with the 2023 version of Bezzecchi who took three wins and finished third in that year’s standings, not the inconsistent rider who faded to 12th last year and managed just one podium in 20 rounds.
This season has been Aprilia’s most successful in MotoGP and a headache at the same time given Martin, absent yet again in Portugal, has suffered multiple injuries and started just seven Grands Prix; in Australia, Rivola pondered whether the short-term pain of 2025 might be a good thing down the track.
“I think this ‘Bez’ is better than the ’23 one,” Rivola said.
“He still has margin [to improve], and he became a leader also because we were lacking on the other side of the garage because Jorge was missing. He became the leader, and this will make things even more interesting when Jorge will be back because I’m sure Jorge also wants to be the leader, so it will be a nice fight.”
‘Nice’ is a word that could describe Bezzecchi’s championship position on Sunday night as the paddock packed down to head to the final round in Valencia next weekend.
With 37 points on offer, Bezzecchi now stands 35 ahead of Bagnaia for third behind the Marquez brothers in the season standings, not a result rider and team would have seen coming when Martin’s wretched 2025 got off to a bad start with an injury in pre-season testing in Malaysia in February and went from bad to mostly worse thereafter.
Bezzecchi’s victory was the latest of a six-round run where picking the winner has been akin to throwing darts at a dartboard; prior to Sunday in Portugal, the previous five rounds had been won by Alex Marquez (Malaysia), Raul Fernandez (Australia) and Fermin Aldeguer (Indonesia) as first-time premier-class winners in back-to-back rounds, and then factory Ducati teammates Bagnaia (Japan) and Marc Marquez (San Marino) before that.
Back in 2020 – the strange, 14-round championship where multiple rounds were held at the same tracks to get a season away during the covid pandemic – a six-race stretch produced six different winners: Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha, Andalucia), Brad Binder (KTM, Czech Republic), Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati, Austria), Miguel Oliveira (KTM, Styria), Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha, San Marino) and Maverick Vinales (Yamaha, Emilia-Romagna).
Bezzecchi’s form in Portimao on Sunday was such that you can foresee that run of variety coming to a screeching halt in Valencia next weekend.
As Sunday showed, the Italian is capable of performances few can match when he’s on, and it would surprise few if his best MotoGP season yet was confirmed by another visit to the podium’s top step.
“I found something better in braking, but I was able to have a bit more flow which in this track is super important,” Bezzecchi said of what made the difference between Saturday, when he trailed Marquez and Acosta, and Sunday where he saw neither Spaniard from the start of the race until the podium ceremony afterwards.
“Valencia … we have to concentrate to try to finish the season in the best way possible, then we have an important test to start 2026 already. But it has been a good second part of the season until now, so let’s try to keep our mood super positive.
“[Third in the championship] is not done yet … yes, we must enjoy now, but tomorrow we go back to work.”
Bezzecchi all-but sealed third in the 2025 championship with his second Grand Prix win of the season in Portugal. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)Source: AP
YAMAHA ‘A HANDFUL’ AS MILLER FALLS OUTSIDE TOP 10
It was a familiar story for Jack Miller and Yamaha on Sunday in Portugal, with the Australian rider dropping from eighth on the grid to 12th in the race, and with his Yamaha stablemates in a slow-speed train stuck in the middle of the pack as the bike’s engine limitations put a ceiling on progress.
Miler, who came through Q1 to qualify a superb eighth on Saturday as one of only two Yamahas inside the top 10, dropped two places on the first lap in Sunday’s 25-lap race, and was routinely punished for his bike’s power delivery in the final two corners that led onto the start-finish straight, falling backwards as rivals on bikes with greater top speed zapped the Yamahas on the straight into the first corner.
Yamaha’s shining light Fabio Quartararo (sixth) was the manufacturer’s best performer, but he like Miller faded from a more promising grid position (third), while Miller finished ahead of fellow Yamaha riders Alex Rins (13th) and Pramac teammate Miguel Oliveira (14th in his final home race before heading to World Superbikes next season), the trio covered by less than two seconds after 41 minutes of racing for the minor placings.
“That was much of a muchness today,” Miller said.
“I got away to a decent start and tried to challenge the boys there and stay involved, but I was suffering on the exit of [turns] 14-15 and once the tyre [grip] dropped, that got even harder to do.
“I was only catching back [elsewhere in the lap] what I was giving up in those two corners, those two accelerations. The bike was pumping like mad, so you’re trying to do what you can to keep it under control. It’s a handful.
“I was just trying to get the bike as straight as possible from turns 14 to 15 to squirt it through there, but it was still f*king tying itself in knots before heading into 15. You try to manage it as best you can with lean angle and position on-throttle, but when you’re missing that inertia, that torque in the engine, it gets hard to do.”
Miller finished lower than he qualified for the fifth time this season on Sunday, and said while he and Quartararo are able to mitigate the bike’s shortcomings over one lap, the established Yamaha hierarchy – the 2021 world champion closer to the front than Miller, Rins and Oliveira – played out in the race.
“We’re all pushing the thing to the absolute max every lap, and obviously Fabio and I – Fabio especially – has been a strong qualifier his whole career, and it’s generally been one of my stronger points,” he said.
“We’re obviously able to find a little bit more when it comes to singular lap times, but Miguel and Alex are obviously Grand Prix winners and no slouches on motorcycles at all and have always been very strong in races.
“I think you see the level of the bike when it comes to the race, the lap times are very similar.”
With one round remaining, Miller has 72 points to sit 18th in the world championship standings.
Of the other Australians in action on Sunday in Portugal, Darwin’s Joel Kelso finished seventh and five seconds from victory after starting from pole in Moto3, while Sydney’s Senna Agius, winner of his home race at Phillip Island last month, was ninth and nine seconds from victory in Moto2 after starting from 13th place.
Kelso is a career-best sixth in the Moto3 standings and Agius 10th in Moto2 with one round remaining in 2025.
Miller and Pramac Yamaha teammate Miguel Oliveira were part of a three-rider Yamaha train outside of the top 10 in a tough race on Sunday. (Yamaha Motor Racing Srl)Source: Supplied
HERO TO ZERO: BAGNAIA’S BRUTAL SEASON HITS NEW LOW
Bezzecchi getting to the precipice of taking third in the championship on an Aprilia in a season where Ducati has – again – largely dominated brought Bagnaia’s troubled 2025 into a new light, the two-time MotoGP champion’s baffling campaign taking an unwanted twist with a lap 11 crash while running in an unthreatening fourth place.
Bagnaia versus Marc Marquez at the factory Ducati team Bagnaia has called home since 2021 was supposed to be the storyline of the season, but it never eventuated as Marquez was so dominant – and Bagnaia so inconsistent – that Marquez wrapped up the title in Japan on a September weekend where Bagnaia issued a brief reminder of the searing speed that took him to 11 Grand Prix wins in 2024.
Bagnaia’s fifth non-score in six Grands Prix could see him fall outside of the top four in the championship next weekend. (Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP)Source: AFP
Sunday’s crash, after he’d qualified fourth and finished eighth in the Portugal sprint, was – remarkably – Bagnaia’s fifth Grand Prix non-score in the past six rounds from Misano to Portimao; the only race in that Sunday span where he’s managed to score points was Japan, where he qualified on pole, led every lap and took just his second win of 2025.
Bagnaia now has 288 points for the season – Marc Marquez, on the same bike and absent for the past three rounds, has 545 – and the 2022 and 2023 world champion is now at risk of falling to fifth in this year’s standings behind KTM’s Acosta, who has podiums in three of the past four Grands Prix to draw within three points of Bagnaia heading into Valencia.
Bagnaia hasn’t finished lower than second in the championship since 2021; he was 16th as a MotoGP sophomore in 2020 at Pramac Ducati alongside Miller after missing a trio of races with injury.
