Alex Marquez passed polesitter Pedro Acosta to claim victory in the Catalan Grand Prix sprint, while Jorge Martin suffered another crash in a tough day for the factory Aprilia team.
Marquez moved to the front on lap 4 of 12 and established a small buffer aboard the Gresini Ducati. While he came under serious pressure from the factory KTM of Acosta in the final laps, he didn’t put a foot wrong to register his first sprint win since last year’s Valencia GP. Polesitter Acosta had to settle for second, while Fabio di Giannantonio completed the podium for VR46.
At the start of the race, Acosta held the lead into Turn 1 and after moving across to cover a fast-starting Marquez. Franco Morbidelli dropped down the order after starting second, while Johann Zarco made a brilliant launch from fifth to grab third early on.
LCR rider Zarco even managed to overtake Marquez for second, but the latter used the straightline speed of the Ducati to blast past the Frenchman before setting off after race leader Acosta.
The KTM rider covered the inside line the first time out as they went down the front straight, but Marquez cut to the right at the end of lap 3 and grabbed into the lead under braking for Turn 1.
Acosta could not keep pace with the Gresini rider in the early laps and soon fell to third behind Fernandez, who had already cleared Zarco after starting fourth on the grid.
Start action
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / Getty Images
But the Trackhouse rider also began to struggle in the final part of the race, allowing Acosta to repass him with four laps to run.
At this stage, Marquez was leading the race by six tenths, a gap Acosta managed to cut by half over the next three laps.
The 21-year-old closely followed Marquez and kept the pressure up on the final lap, but the latter held on by just 0.118s to claim his first sprint win of the 2026 MotoGP season.
The final spot on the podium eventually went to di Giannantonio, who passed Fernandez with two laps to go to take third place.
Fernandez still ended up as the top Aprilia rider in fourth, while Zarco held on to fifth place despite lacking straightline speed on the factory Honda.
Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia climbed from 13th on the grid to finish sixth ahead of Morbidelli, while Trackhouse rider Ai Ogura completed an even more impressive recovery ride as he charged from 18th to eighth place.
Brad Binder, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, Joan Mir, Honda HRC crash
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / Getty Images
Championship leader Marco Bezzecchi could only muster a single point in ninth following a nasty crash in qualifying that left him 12th on the grid. Running as high as seventh early on, he struggled for speed and dropped to 10th, before repassing Tech3’s Enea Bastianini on the final lap to take ninth.
Meanwhile, Martin’s disastrous Catalan GP weekend continued, as the 2024 champion crashing out at Turn 10 on lap 3 after climbing from ninth to sixth early on.
Maverick Vinales’s return to MotoGP also ended prematurely, with the Tech3 rider pulling into the pits halfway through the race with a technical problem.
Both Joan Mir and Brad Binder were forced into retirement following an opening lap collision. The incident was triggered by di Giannantonio and Binder coming into contact at Turn 1, which sent the KTM rider crashing into the path of Mir, who was taking an unusually long line into the opening right-hander.
MotoGP Catalan GP – Sprint race results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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