The ironic twist that helped Aldeguer to his first MotoGP win

“I was waiting for Bez, because he was faster than me the whole weekend. But he didn’t arrive.”

Fermin Aldeguer was right to have been looking over his shoulder during the Indonesian Grand Prix on Sunday. After all, Marco ‘Bez’ Bezzecchi had hunted him down with ease after a poor start in the Saturday sprint. The factory Aprilia was surely going to gobble up the rookie’s Gresini Ducati once again.

What Aldeguer didn’t know was that Bezzecchi had not been able to survive the first lap after his latest weak getaway. The Italian had already lost the race seven corners in – putting Aldeguer in prime position to win it.

In a bizarre way, it was Bezzecchi’s own speed that led to the Rimini man losing and the 20-year-old Murcian winning. To understand the story of how this race was lost and won, we must go all the way back to Friday morning.

From his very first lap on Friday, Bezzecchi looked absolutely at one with his RS-GP. Aprilia usually needs time to sort its mapping early in the weekend, but that didn’t seem to be the case at Mandalika. The fact that there was only half as much data incoming, with the factory’s Jorge Martin and Trackhouse’s Ai Ogura out injured, didn’t seem to matter either. The solo Trackhouse bike of Raul Fernandez was, relative to his usual standards, flying high with Bezzecchi.

It was a classic case of ‘fast out of the box’ for the Aprilia. Reminiscent, in fact, of when Aleix Espargaro took the marque’s first MotoGP win in Argentina in 2022. Bezzecchi duly finished Friday at the top of the timesheets. But his wasn’t the usual slim edge by which sessions are typically won and lost. By MotoGP standards, it was a whopping eternity: 0.408s. Securing pole the next day was no problem either – and the usually midfield Fernandez joined him on the front row.

OK, an Aprilia was the bike to have on Lombok this year. But there’s an old rule of thumb in MotoGP: the Ducatis will be fast at any given circuit. Particularly a certain red one belonging to Marc Marquez. But that ever-present competition from Ducati went largely AWOL last weekend.

At Mandalika, a harder, ‘tropical-spec’ tyre carcass threw the bikes, riders and engineers a curveball almost nobody but Aprilia seemed able to handle. Don’t forget that gap on the timesheets on Friday, and the yawning four-tenths by which Bezzecchi stormed to pole: even the rest of the top five were struggling. And the usual-suspect Ducatis were thin on the ground – especially those red ones.

On a weekend when the GP24/GP25 saga really blew up in public, the current-spec bike timed its worst outing of the year with theatrical perfection. Bagnaia was back to his pre-Japan misery, which makes him a difficult gauge. But the hitherto unbeatable Marquez was nowhere on Friday and also crashing. He is no fan of Mandalika and had been a busy, sleep-deprived man since winning the title a week before may have excused a slow start, but even on Saturday he could only qualify ninth.

You could come with a Yamaha, you turn up with a VR46 GP25, you could even be riding the field’s other Aprilia… and Bezzecchi would destroy you in sector two

The factory team had a pure speed issue in Indonesia. And it was one shared by the VR46 team, though Fabio Di Giannantonio did flirt with credibility by making Q2 aboard his GP25 – before lining up 11th.

Only Gresini Ducati’s GP24s, it seemed, could be at all competitive in Indonesia. More specifically that of Aldeguer, who was second in both practice and qualifying. But those gaps to Bezzecchi, as we’ve seen, were monumental all the same.

To grasp how this weekend played out, we must understand the nature of Bezzecchi’s advantage over the field aboard the lead Aprilia. His edge was founded on performance through the quick, Assen-style sweeps of the second sector – and to an outlandish degree.

Bezzecchi had such a margin over the rest that it appeared to factor into his Sunday downfall

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Here are a couple of revealing examples of Bezzecchi’s gargantuan margin over various rivals in that flowing section of track.

Free Practice 1:
1. Bezzecchi 18.290s
2. Rins 18.516s

Free Practice 2:
1. Bezzecchi 18.158s
6. Di Giannantonio 18.355s
18. Marc Marquez 18.576s

Qualifying 2:
1. Bezzecchi 17.956s
2. Fernandez 18.115s
12. Marc Marquez 18.457s

You could come with a Yamaha, you turn up with a VR46 GP25, you could even be riding the field’s other Aprilia… and Bezzecchi would destroy you in sector two. Most astonishingly of all, though, was Marquez’s ranking in that part of the track.

Granted, fast right-handers are a weak point for him and that sector is full of them. But that 12th place in Q2 was stone last in the session, by half a second. That’s a vast gap over a full lap, never mind a single sector.

The Marquez/Bezzecchi incident

Starting from pole position, Bezzecchi wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Marquez in Sunday’s race. He couldn’t blunder a second start in as many days, could he? That was why Bezzecchi found himself mired in the pack on the opening lap, stuck behind guesting midfielder Marquez as the pack streamed into the fast sweepers of sector two.

When Bezzecchi ran into Marquez, taking both of them out, the world leapt to cast instant judgment. It was a clumsy and irresponsible attempt to overtake at an unsuitable spot! Impatient, too, given he had proven on Saturday that he could work his way to the front in half the laps that would be available today.

But if you had spent time looking at those sector two numbers, you might see the clash a little differently.

Was it just pure speed in sector two that factored into Bezzecchi running into Marquez?

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

In a sector with five corners, Bez was half a second faster than Marquez in qualifying. That’s a tenth of a second per corner.

Bezzecchi would have known he had an advantage over everybody in that section of track. But he probably wouldn’t have expected the undisputed champion of the 2025 field to be that slow through there, especially when running inside the top 10. MotoGP is generally so close that you don’t expect anybody to be that slow, unless you’re following Somkiat Chantra.

We never got to hear Bezzecchi’s side of the story after the race, as his medical check-ups prevented him doing media duty. But it’s a reasonable theory that dramatic closing speed was what led to this accident. Bezzecchi could probably have reacted to it better, but it is at least an explanation.

“I overtook Marini at the same place that I tried [to fight back] yesterday, on the last lap with Bez. And I overtook Pedro in the same corner that I lost yesterday in the sprint. I improved…” Fermin Aldeguer

If Aprilia’s field-smashing speed in that sector is ultimately what caused it to lose the Indonesian GP, the irony of it all is beyond compare. Regardless, Bezzecchi was out – and that meant an opportunity for someone. Even more ironically, it would be a Ducati.

As we’ve seen, Aldeguer was the only consistently competitive Ducati all weekend in Indonesia. A bit like the Aprilia, he just seemed to gel with the circumstances. His team-mate acknowledged as much.

“I think his natural way of riding was really perfect for this track,” said Alex Marquez. “He was better than everybody else in Ducati on this track. [It came] from the rider, not from the bike. He was making the difference. He did a better job than us. He was able to ride in a really free way. We saw it on the data.”

Acosta held up the field which allowed Aldeguer to bolt clear

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

But Aldeguer still had work to do. He was only third when Bezzecchi went down, trailing KTM’s Pedro Acosta and Honda’s Luca Marini. He muscled past Marini at Turn 12 on lap four, then snatched the lead from Acosta at Turn 10 three laps later.

Having been mugged by Bezzecchi on the final lap on Saturday, these moves showed that Aldeguer had learned fast. And he couldn’t help grinning about that after the race: “I overtook Marini at the same place that I tried [to fight back] yesterday, on the last lap with Bez. And I overtook Pedro in the same corner that I lost yesterday in the sprint. I improved…”

Now down to second, Acosta promptly did Aldeguer a big favour by bottling up the field for much of the race, leaving him to gallop away and everyone else in the dark about what might have been. Could Marini have challenged for victory? Or even the independent Aprilia of Fernandez? We’ll never know, because Aldeguer had an insurmountable lead of over seven seconds by the time Rins passed the KTM on lap 19. Given that tyre drop-off is rarely an issue for the fast-finishing Aldeguer, this was the rookie’s to lose.

Still, in that situation – a newbie race leader left alone with his thoughts – only a fool would consider the grand prix a done deal. Especially at a track where leaders had been known to fall while under little pressure – see Martin, Mandalika, 2023. But it turned out Aldeguer had learned from watching that too.

“When I was on the bike, I remembered this crash of Jorge Martin,” he explained. “But sometimes it’s better to continue at your pace because if you maybe reduce the speed, you make more mistakes. I tried all the time to be focused. This pace of 30.8s, 30.7s was comfortable for me without going over the limit.”

He expertly wound down the laps and brought the GP24 home for that maiden grand prix win. And so earns the final word on why his was the unlikely Ducati that could pick up the pieces when the fastest man fell: that special rear carcass was made for Aldeguer.

“I think this new rear tyre here helped me, for sure, because we saw other riders, the other Ducatis, more on the limit,” he summed up. “In Moto2, and also in Austria this year, [we have seen that] when the tyre is harder, I’m very fast. [That’s because] I manage the throttle very well. I do a good flow.”

Aldeguer’s superior tyre management enabled him to take advantage of Bezzecchi’s fall and secure his maiden win

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

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