Marc Marquez crashes, Alex Marquez into MotoGP lead with first win

Alex Marquez took his first MotoGP grand prix win in the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez, as his brother Marc crashed out of contention in the early stages.

The win returned Alex - who previously claimed the top step in the sprint at Sepang in 2023 but never in a full-distance MotoGP race - to the top of the championship standings. It came after a run of eight second-place finishes in nine sprint-and-GP starts in 2025.

Leading finishers

1 A Marquez
2 Quartararo
3 Bagnaia
Full results at bottom of page

Dominant on Saturday, Marc was slow off the line this time - so, instead of challenging poleman Fabio Quartararo for the lead like he had on Saturday, he had to lunge Alex into Turn 1 to even hang on to third.

Alex then nearly caused a major calamity by getting his braking wrong into Turn 6, so had to 'thread the needle' between the two factory Ducatis up ahead - before his brother and Bagnaia promptly began to duel.

They ran virtually side by side through the successive right-handers in the second part of the lap, at one point even making contact, before Marc dropped back towards Alex.

And as he looked to gather himself he instead crashed coming into the long Turn 8 left-hander on the third lap, rejoining the race all the way down in 22nd.

The Marquez/Bagnaia battle on the opening lap had granted Quartararo breathing room out front, and instead of him being reeled in by Bagnaia it was the two-time champion who was caught and passed by the younger Marquez courtesy of a fourth-lap lunge at the final corner.

It then took Alex Marquez until lap 11 of 25 to line up and execute a move on Quartararo, which ended up a fairly textbook Turn 1 overtake - with Quartararo having no answer as soon as Marquez found clean air.

Bagnaia quickly came up on the Yamaha too but found overtaking Quartararo harder still, the 2021 champion resisting some initial pressure before establishing a fairly consistent half-second cushion.

That cushion was never really breached, meaning Quartararo - coming home 1.6s behind Alex Marquez - delivered Yamaha's first MotoGP podium of any kind since Indonesia in 2023.

Tech3's Maverick Vinales, the KTM standout this weekend, briefly threatened to join the podium battle but never really did - meaning Bagnaia brought it home in third and now sits 20 points back from Alex Marquez and 19 points back from Marc Marquez.

Fabio Di Giannantonio stayed out of trouble to salvage a fifth-place finish from a difficult weekend on the VR46 Ducati. He was aided by rookie Fermin Aldeguer crashing out in front of him - and by team-mate Franco Morbidelli having to fight back from an error on the opening lap before also crashing.

There was also yet another crash for Honda's Joan Mir - shortly after being overtaken by Morbidelli and right as he looked to be coming under pressure from Brad Binder - while Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha) and Somkiat Chantra (LCR Honda) exited the race with a technical issue and arm pump respectively.

Binder headed Pedro Acosta in the battle within the KTM works team, having had a much better opening lap. Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia), Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM) and Luca Marini (Honda) completed the top 10.

Alex Marquez's points lead is only one point because Marc did recover from 22nd to 12th at the end, running the best pace of anyone - seemingly by far - in the second half of the race.

Marco Bezzecchi, who went off on the opening lap and then tucked in behind the crashed Marquez, had a recovery ride of his own, and claimed 14th from Honda tester Aleix Espargaro an hour after the finish. Espargaro finished just ahead on the road but was then given a 16-second penalty for a tyre pressure breach.

Results

1 Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati)
2 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha)
3 Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati)
4 Maverick Vinales (Tech3 KTM)
5 Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR46 Ducati)
6 Brad Binder (KTM)
7 Pedro Acosta (KTM)
8 Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia)
9 Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM)
10 Luca Marini (Honda)
11 Johann Zarco (LCR Honda)
12 Marc Marquez (Ducati)
13 Alex Rins (Yamaha)
14 Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia)
15 Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia)
16 Augusto Fernandez (Pramac Yamaha)
17 Aleix Espargaro (Honda)
18 Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia)
DNF Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati)
DNF Franco Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati)
DNF Joan Mir (Honda)
DNF Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha)
DNF Somkiat Chantra (LCR Honda)