Aprilia rider Marco Bezzecchi smashed the all-time circuit record at Ricardo Tormo to claim pole position for MotoGP’s 2025 season-ending Valencia Grand Prix.
Having dropped to ninth on the timesheets following an off-track excursion at Turn 2 on his first flying lap, Bezzecchi bounced back strongly on his second run to set a blistering lap time of 1m28.809s.
Although all his rivals got at least one more lap to snatch the top spot from him, the Italian held firm to end the final stretch of the campaign with back-to-back pole positions – having also topped qualifying last weekend in Portugal.
In-form Alex Marquez came closest to dethroning Bezzecchi, qualifying second on the Gresini Ducati. Marquez was the first rider to break the 1m29s barrier this weekend, climbing to the top spot of the timesheets with a 1m28.967s on his first run. While he managed to find over a tenth of a second on his final flying lap, he still fell 0.026s short of Bezzecchi’s benchmark.
Fabio di Giannantonio put together a solid performance to qualify third for VR46 Ducati, with Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez coming from Q1 to grab fourth on the grid.
Pre-qualifying favourite Pedro Acosta was only fifth-fastest on the factory KTM, but he ended up just 0.096s off pole in an ultra-competitive session. The 20-year-old suffered a crash in the final minutes of FP2, hampering his preparations for qualifying.
Sixth place went to factory Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo, who once again shone in qualifying to secure a spot on the second row. Franco Morbidelli put his VR46 Ducati seventh on the grid, beating Pramac rider Jack Miller and Gresini’s Fermin Aldeguer.
Honda had a low-key qualifying with factory rider Joan Mir finishing only 10th and LCR’s Johann Zarco just behind him in 11th. Although Trackhouse’s Ai Ogura topped the FP2 session that preceded qualifying, he was 12th and slowest among the Q2 runners with a time that was 0.562s slower than Bezzecchi’s pole effort.
Ai Ogura, Trackhouse Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images
Factory Honda rider Luca Marini missed out on Q2 by half a tenth and will line up 13th on the grid, just ahead of HRC test rider Aleix Espargaro and KTM ace Brad Binder.
Francesco Bagnaia could only qualify 16th after parking his factory Ducati at Turn 8 due to what appeared to be a technical problem. The two-time MotoGP champion had been sitting second in Q1 with three minutes left when his bike let go, but a flurry of late improvements demoted him to the sixth row of the grid.
Returning to MotoGP for the first time since his crash in the Motegi sprint race in September, 2024 title winner Jorge Martin qualified 17th on the Aprilia RS-GP.
Marc Marquez’s substitute Nicolo Bulega ended qualifying in 22nd, while Yamaha test rider Augusto Fernandez could finish no higher than 23rd on the V4-powered M1 after crashing early in Q1 and mounting on his second bike.
Q2 results:
Q1 results:
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– The Autosport.com Team
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