Sprint podium down to “more laps on the bike”

Fermin Aldeguer has suggested that his first top-three result on a MotoGP weekend was only ever a matter of time. The 20-year-old rookie scored third place in Saturday’s sprint race at Le Mans, coming home just behind his Gresini Ducati team-mate Alex Marquez.

Following a quiet first two weekends of 2025, Aldeguer suddenly began to show his speed at the Americas Grand Prix weekend in March. Since then, he has run higher and higher aboard his GP24, albeit with a couple of crashes thrown in.

His third place in the French sprint followed a fourth in the Qatar equivalent and a fifth on Saturday at Jerez. And it was founded on his best qualifying result yet: Aldeguer lined up fourth for the start at Le Mans.

Falls notwithstanding, the Moto2 graduate’s rise to his current level – he’s now virtually matching his experienced team-mate, who became a MotoGP race winner last time out in Spain – has been so progressive that it has already become easy to forget his rookie status.

But on the sixth weekend of his MotoGP career, perhaps that’s fitting. Aldeguer reminded media that his learning curve has been steep and that he has taken massive steps. Every opportunity to ride the bike is like gold dust for a rookie – and that’s why he looks more and more like an old hand the deeper we get into the season.

“It’s experience,” he said. “It’s more laps with the bike and more laps fighting with the top riders. With the faster riders, you improve faster. We are rookies, we are in a good moment now… but we have to stay calm and continue with the progression.”

Although he finished within two seconds of Alex on Saturday, Aldeguer does not believe he is on even terms with his team-mate yet.

“He is my first rival, he is my team-mate – but we have a lot of respect. Fighting with Alex is not my goal. I have to stay behind him, stay behind the top riders and continue improving.

“For sure, if I have more [speed], I will try to overtake – but I think now we are not faster than him. We have to continue improving.”

While improvements will get ever tougher to find as Aldeguer edges nearer the top, the good news is that there are still obvious areas to work on. His crash in qualifying, for example, immediately followed his best lap. Had he continued the session, he might even have given Alex a run for third place on the grid.

Aldeguer’s focus on Sunday will be converting his pace into a grand prix finish representative of his speed. While he did finish the Qatar GP sixth (later fifth after Maverick Vinales’ penalty), he crashed out of potential podium positions either side of that in the USA and Spain.