Marc Marquez takes sprint win as Quartararo crashes

Marc Marquez shrugged off a brief challenge from Fabio Quartararo as he took a fifth straight 2025 sprint race victory aboard the factory Ducati.

Although Quartararo was able to convert his surprise pole position into a brief lead, he fell when Marquez overtook him halfway around the second lap.

That was the end of any challenge to the Ducati dominance, as the Bologna bikes swept the top six in the best possible result, given its six representatives on the grid.

With Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati) second and Francesco Bagnaia third on the second factory bike, the sprint top three simply cemented their respective positions in the championship. Marc now leads Alex by 20 points.

What little entertainment the sprint offered came in the first lap and a half. Quartararo looked to have lost the lead as Marc Marquez enjoyed the better initial getaway, but the Frenchman struck back on the entry to the first corner and was able to establish himself in the lead for the first lap.

But Marquez was already close to the Yamaha heading into the first corner of lap two. The factory Ducati pulled out of the slipstream halfway around the same lap and outbraked Quartararo on the inside as the pair approached the hairpin at Pedrosa.

Quartararo tried to stay with Marquez on the outside line, but could not get the M1 to turn in whilst asking so much of it. While he found himself on the floor and out of the race, Marquez was gifted a handy lead over his brother Alex.

That’s how it would stay for the remaining 10 laps of the race around the one-line Andalusian circuit, with Alex failing to mount any serious challenge to Marc. Bagnaia, for his part, could not threaten Alex, and had to settle for third – which was at least a significant improvement on his sprint outing last time out in Qatar.

Franco Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati) was briefly ahead of Bagnaia on the first lap, but couldn’t make that move stick and he spent the rest of the race behind his fellow Italian.

Next up in the Ducati train was Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini), who withstood some early pressure from Fabio di Giannantonio (VR46) before making fifth place his own ahead of the Rimini man.

Maverick Vinales was behind di Giannantonio all race long, and the Tech3 KTM man’s seventh place made him the best of the non-Ducatis.

The last two points-paying positions went to Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi and Honda’s Joan Mir.

Cruelly, it meant that the pole-winning manufacturer, Yamaha, was the only one to come away from the sprint without a point in the riders’ championship.

MotoGP Spanish GP – Sprint race results