Aprilia rider Marco Bezzecchi bounced back from a costly first-lap mistake in Indonesia to claim an emphatic victory in the sprint race at the Australian Grand Prix.
Bezzecchi passed the Trackhouse Aprilia of Raul Ferandez with three laps to run and then escaped into the distance to score his third sprint win in four weekends. Fernandez held on to second, with Pedro Acosta completing the podium spots for KTM.
At the start of the race, Alex Marquez got the holeshot from sixth on the grid, as Quartararo got shuffled back from pole position.
However, Marquez couldn’t stay at the front for too long, with Fernandez snatching the lead from him at Miller Corner with a great launch of his own from the second row of the grid.
Marquez then ran hot and dropped behind Marco Bezzecchi into third, setting up an intra-Aprilia battle for victory.
Bezzecchi rapidly closed in on Fernandez on lap 6, but carried too much speed into Turn 10 and ran wide, losing almost a second with that error.
However, so fast was the Italian that he cut the deficit by half on the next lap, before returning to striking distance on lap 9.
Bezzecchi finally made the race-winning move at Southern Loop on lap 10, with Fernandez unable to put up much of a fight as he settled into second.
The factory Aprilia rider eventually cruised to a 3.1s win, scoring his second consecutive sprint victory following his triumph in Indonesia a fortnight ago.
Fernandez also secured back-to-back sprint podiums, having finished third at Mandalika last time.
Raul Fernandez, Trackhouse Racing
The final spot on the rostrum went to KTM’s Pedro Acosta, who held off a late charge from home hero Jack Miller to claim third place.
Acosta appeared to have the podium secured after he shot past both Miller and Marquez on lap 7 with a brilliant double move at Turn 1.
The Pramac Yamaha rider came back on the final lap and even had a look at Acosta, but the Spaniard eventually did enough to hold on to the podium.
Fourth place still marked Miller’s best finish of the 2025 season, in a sprint or a grand prix, and he also ended up as the top Yamaha rider at Phillip Island.
VR46 rider Fabio di Giannantonio recovered from a poor qualifying that left him 10th on the grid to finish fifth, just a tenth behind Acosta and Miller.
It marked the first time since the introduction of the sprint format in 2023 that a Ducati failed to finish inside the top three.
Ducati’s struggles were compounded by Gresini’s Marquez dropping to sixth after leading briefly early on, with his team-mate and Indonesia winner Fermin Aldeguer crashing out at Southern Loop late on.
Meanwhile, Quartararo could only manage seventh after starting from pole, but the Yamaha star still beat the top factory Honda of Luca Marini by over two tenths of a second.
Behind Marini, KTM wildcard Pol Espargaro (wildcard) and Tech3’s Enea Bastianini completed the top 10.
Factory Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia endured another nightmare race as he struggled to 19th place, only finishing ahead of test rider and Marc Marquez’s stand-in, Michele Pirro.
The two-time MotoGP champion started 11th after a tough qualifying and continued to drop down the order, with his pace dropping into 1m30s at one stage.
Australian GP – Sprint results:
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– The Autosport.com Team
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