The Assen track is normally a difficult one for Marc Márquez (Ducati), but he managed to win both the Sprint and the Sunday race this weekend, nonetheless. He did not do so from pole position, however, as Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo took that honor.
Saturday’s Sprint race saw Marquez followed home by his brother Alex (Ducati) in second place and Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) in third.
Sunday’s main event saw Marc Márquez take the lead early as Bezzecchi worked his way through the other leaders to reach second position, where he followed Marc closely for the remainder of the race without ever finding an opportunity to pass him. Finishing third on Sunday behind Bezzecchi was Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati).
During a hard-fought battle with Pedro Acosta (KTM), Alex Marquez crashed hard in Sunday’s race, breaking, as we currently understand it, a finger on his left hand.
For full results and points for Saturday’s Sprint race, visit the MotoGP site here. For full results and points for Sunday’s MotoGP race, visit the MotoGP site here.
Was better than I expected. Bez actually made it almost a race. Might as well give MM the trophy already and cancel the rest of the season. Kind of like watching a new movie but knowing how it ends it might be a good movie but knowing the ending kind of spoils it.
At least Moto 2 is decent and Moto 3 is nearly always exciting. Can’t wait for the 2027 season. Hopefully it makes MotoGP better even if the bikes end up being slower.
is my ethnocentrism showing on this independence weekend? the mayo clinic fixed this guy when the spanish doctors couldn’t. and their repair survived his rehab regimen.
i really dislike the new ad format, where ads are placed right left bottom in my face. these are products i will not buy. go away adblock. and probably wont be coming here, if this keeps up.
Brave browser.
Domination. This is the reason I didn’t renew my MotoGP membership this year. Plus, it feels like every other word from the commentators is Marquez. Next year will be the same. Maybe in 2027 there will be better competition when the 850’s are introduced.
I don’t understand. I suppose one manufacturer might strike the best balance faster than the others. But that will just change the look of last year to a different color up front. This year, save the Marquez kids seeming to get better bikes than the rest of the pack, which I’m sure makes the Spanish people who heavily fund MotoGP happy, the rest of the field is starting to show progress.
The rule changes don’t look promising to me. A reduction in displacement just means the teams will stress the engine’s more, possibly leading to more DNFs and oiled down tracks. A reduction of the width of the areo isn’t going to make the bikes look any less ridiculous. The ride height stuff is probably being dropped so the street bikers don’t start clamoring for it and crashing all over the place by misusing it. I just see it as another tax on the manufacturers to rob support from WSB and heaven forbid they start supporting AMA racing again. Lord knows the don’t want to start selling sport bikes again.
Funny the manufacturers seem to realize that the four stroke craze of 2002 didn’t kill dirt bike sales the way it did to sport bikes. The Ducati makes 63hp, is reported to have pretty broad power and weighs 231 pounds. If I were in the mood to make another street supermoto, that might be an interesting platform. I know KTM sells a supermoto. But they went and put a 16.5 inch front wheel on it. Holy limited tire choices Batman! I guess buying one wheel is still cheaper than buying two.
Whatever, I spent decades learning how to make carburetors sing. I’ll be darned if I destroy the purity and simplicity of one of my dirt bikes with fuel injection. Neadless complexity. FI used to be good for street bikes because it was a work around for those horrible CV Carburetors. Dirt bikes never had those in the first place. Now most of the street bikes have ride by wire. Not in my garage ever.
On the face of it, the reduction in displacement could lead to more stressed engines but they have engine allocation rules to discourage teams from going that way. If speed reduction for safety is the impetus for these changes then I think they missed. I can’t see anything in the changes that will have much effect on speeds where riders most commonly crash.
Going 4-stroke had nothing to do with any change in sport bike sales. Aside from a few short years of things like the RD/RZ Yamahas, they were always 4-strokes here in the US. The boom in popularity coincided with the release if bikes like the Honda CBR600 Hurricane and Kawasaki Ninja 600r and then went bananas from there.
I wonder why Bagnaia doesn’t ride last year’s bike. He clearly had better results on it.
Would need to compare last year to this year’s laptimes (I haven’t..). Could be relative and the Marquez brothers have just gained a tiny bit more than he’s managed to this year.
He’s been complaining about the handling of the bike and getting uncharacteristically bad results. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
I don’t have any skin in the game. I’m just seeing a good racer have a difficult time with a new bike. You could say give it until mid season, whenever that is, or bail on it.
It’s just equipment. Ride the one that works best. Or give Dorna a brothers story to sell their marks. It’s all so slimy.
Again, need to compare the times. He’s solidly 3rd in he championship. That’s not where the sitting champ wants to be but it’s also not off the back. I doubt there are extra GP24 bikes just waiting around, the prior year bikes get passed down to the satellite teams. Alex Marquez is on the only GP24 outperforming him anyway.
Not empirical data but this quote from Bagnaia supports your assertion. Makes me wonder why the other GP24’s aren’t closer to the Marquez brothers?
“ This is a really complex situation. We all know how difficult this year’s bike is. Races at Assen and Mugello were slower overall…”
maybe your not familiar with how teams work, but the “team”, provides the bike. its not like there is the old bike just behind the red walls in the pits. or even if back at the factory, its all about parts parts parts. I think you would be surprised how difficult it would be for the team to actually try and make the old spec, last years bike, for him. its not like there is a complete bike with all the spares, parts, just laying in a pile no one is using, ready for them to come and take them to make the machine for him. He’s riding the new spec machine. those are the parts they have.
And if you look past the Marquez brother at the overall results you can see that the current spec Ducatis do not dominate like they used to. The teams do have records also. They know what Bagnaia was riding last year. He should be able to use last year’s chassis for instance. This year’s chassis isn’t doing him any favors. It’s almost as if Ducati is neutering the non-Marquez bikes to create a Marquez brother story line. They have clearly clipped Bagnia’s wings.
You can say that time and parts move on for the teams. I would argue that holy smokes. The last few year’s stellar competency for anyone on a Ducati has evaporated for all those not named Marquez. Take those two guys out and the Ducati herd is about average. That wasn’t the case in the very recent past.
Bagnaia has stated that reverting to the GP24 was discussed and they decided together to move forward with the GP25 so they could do it and they deliberately decided not to.
@Mick, if you remove the Marquez brothers then the points they’ve scored re-allocate to the remaining Ducatis which currently occupy the Top-5, becoming the top-3. This follows the safe assumption that without Ducatis under them, the Marquez brothers are no longer capable of running in the top-3. I don’t know if Bez and Zarco maintain the same points gap to them after this re-shuffle but w/o the Marquez brothers, the Ducatis are still the dominant bikes in the field.
The engines for the teams are homologated and sealed. The engines Bagnaia has for this year will not fit into last year’s chassis. He is stuck with what he’s got. The rumor is that next year he could race the 2024 spec bike with the 2024 engine. Not sure how much stock I put into that one.
That is pretty much what I read in Roadracing World.Ducati can’t go back and like Honda was before, Marc is the only one that could ride it. Stoner was the only one with Ducati earlier than that.
Had high hopes this would be a close season. Done and dusted now.