“Only when true perfection was achieved could he afford the luxury of a smile.”
Thank goodness, a relatively quiet week, JUST MotoGP for once, thank god. Mans is tired.
Anyway, welcome back to Dre’s Race Review and in this edition of the show, we’re reviewing MotoGP’s Grand Prix of Aragon, and there’s no other word for it, a dominant, outrageous, unstoppable performance at the front from Marc Marquez. Let’s get into it.
Chasing Perfection
I knew it. You knew it. We all knew it. When it comes to Marc Marquez, we all know there’s a handful of tracks associated with Marc, where if everything goes to plan, he wins. The big three? Austin, where he’s won six times in the top flight, Germany’s Sachsenring with eight (11 if you got the lesser classes), and Aragon, where he’s had six wins. It’s an anti-clockwise behemoth of a track with plenty of long, flowing left-handers, perfect for Marc and his training style of Supercross.
I have to watch my races with TNT Sports, the nature of who gets my phone bill. And they were not slick, they were looking for any narrative, any crumb or hint of a mistake to go “AHA!” after three straight weekends without a Marquez victory. They highlighted the mistakes made in Austin, the first race at Silverstone and at Jerez, they wanted to beat the drum of Marquez being beatable when he loses his concentration.
You know why TNT was digging so hard for that angle? Because they all damn well knew that if Marc got a clean run, he wins.
Marc was half a second ahead of the field the moment he started his race run on Friday. At times, he was a second faster than everyone. Brother Alex had got the deficit down to .2 by the end of Friday, and immediately went to the debrief and said: “Do you really think the gap is .2?”
Again, Alex knew what he was dealing with. I’ve buried the lead long enough, look at the timing sessions across the weekend and where Marc sat:
- Free Practice 1: 1st
- Practice: 1st
- Free Practice 2: 1st
- Qualifying 2: 1st
- Sprint Race: 1st
- Warm-Up Practice: 1st
- Race: 1st (via Grand Chelem)
It’s the first “perfect weekend” via every session being led since Marc did himself on his other sacred ground in Germany, back in 2015. Not to mention, it was a Grand Chelem – Pole, win, fastest lap (On Lap 18 by the way), while leading every lap in the process.
There was a little bit of hard work involved. Marc got a poor start in the Sprint and briefly dropped to fourth as he rubbed shoulders with a dynamite Pedro Acosta. But he quickly got around Franco Morbidelli, and then when he pulled the pin on Alex Marquez, he was half a second quicker in one lap and passed him, not looking back.
Marc got the holeshot in the GP itself and just squeezed the life out of his brother in second. It was death by a thousand red sectors, finding a tenth here and a tenth there to turn the lead into half a second, then eight tenths, a second, eventually pushing out to 2.5 seconds at its peak. Alex put in a valiant effort, and was close in terms of raw pace, but it never really looked like Alex had the pace to overtake his brother, and had to settle for second place. No shame in that here, and he lost the minimum amount of points he could lose at a Marc signature track. He’ll take that for now.
As for Pecco Bagnaia, a mixed bag. A horrible Sprint and another Saturday curtailed by the Sprint tank, and the same complaints he’s had all season, a lack of feeling in the front end. As more weekends have gone by, the more we know about the Ducati GP25 and how it functions.
The GP24 was more or less the perfect bike in terms of ease and use and raw speed. With Ducati chasing perfection, they sacrificed that feeling of stability to chase more speed. Bagnaia and Marquez didn’t like the 25, and turned it into a hybrid of bits and pieces between the two, but with engine mounts in a different place, they can’t go back. Combine that with Pecco being known as a rider who is very sensitive to how the front of a bike handles, it’s not a good combination. Pecco’s lost a lot of his confidence in the front of his bike. At Silverstone, he said he couldn’t tell the difference between the medium and soft front compounds. So when you lose confident in the front of your bike, where you make your speed, you’re left with two options – Push and risk crashing when you don’t know where the limit is, or hold back and lose lap time. Pecco’s mostly been the latter for most of 2025.
Pecco did well to finish the Grand Prix a reasonably competitive third, two seconds off the win. It was his strongest ride of the season so far. But it further highlights the difference between the sides of the garage. Marc Marquez CAN blunt force the front of the bike into generating laptime. He’s made a career out of it on a Honda which was built to incorporate that. We saw it in qualifying where Marc admitted he went too hard on his lap-record pole run, violently changing direction as he went up the hill. It combines that difficult feeling with the Ducati front end, and the superhuman ability Marquez has to catch the front when does go over the limit. That’s worth three tenths, and it’s why Bagnaia is now 93 points behind in the standings, and likely out of the Championship race barring a miracle.
They’ll be harder weekends for Marquez, and he’s on a bike that I’m not convinced is better than what came before it. But that’s tomorrow’s problem. For now, for this weekend, Marc Marquez, was perfect. And sometimes, it’s as simple as that.
The Lightning Round
Only 50,000 on race day in Aragon, and no confirmation for 2026 yet. Uh-oh…
Good round for Pedro Acosta’s KTM as he finished 4th to match his best result of the season. His peers in Brad Binder and Maverick Vinales weren’t so fortunate, crashing from 5th and 7th respectively. Acosta still wants more and it’s a critical test tomorrow. Will someone start the bidding process for the €6m buyout clause in his contract?
Would have loved to have seen what a full strength Marco Bezzecchi would have done. His Aprilia was outstanding at the back end of the race in terms of grip and confidence. But Bez had to start from 20th after a crash in Qualifying 1 and then… a rear ride-height device not working. Superb, love it. 10/10, no notes.
Only fair to give him his due – Excellent P7 from Joan Mir for Honda. More days like that.
Who runs out of patience first? Yamaha with Miguel Oliveira, Honda with Somkiat Chantra, or Enea Bastianini with KTM? A lot of misery back there.
Moto2 is the best racing series in the world right now. Back-to-back classics for the class and a superb fight between Deniz Oncu, Diogo Moreira and Barry Baltus at the front of the field. It was a superb final lap with Oncu making his time in the final corner, and what a finish… 0.003 seconds for the win, the closest in Moto2 history, and the fifth closest in the history of GP Motorcycle racing’s intermediate class. I make it Oncu by… maybe a foot. And seriously good for the series that Turkey’s back in the winner’s circle, Oncu is a genuine character.
Good for David Munoz to finally get his first Moto3 win after 58 attempts, the talent has always been there with him, and it was a smart, cunning ride, something he’s lacked on more infamous occasions. Long time coming. But man, hard not to be impressed with Maximo Quiles. Four starts in, three podiums and missed out on two wins by a combined tenth of a second. Remember the name, this kid’s a star.
And a bonus note on the above two points – Delighted Manu Gonzalez is getting a test with Trackhouse tomorrow as Ai Ogura heals from his leg injury. But I hate the quiet parts being spoken out loud in terms of Gonzalez being held back from top flight opportunities because he’s Spanish and not named Acosta. The sport should be a meritocracy and about the best making it, not lowkey hoping that the winner is someone from a country that scores you a Pointless answer on BBC1.
I get it, it’s not the best of looks that 14 riders on the Premier Class grid are Spanish or Italian, but that’s a testament to the fact those countries that they’ve developed the infrastructure they have that can develop young children to Grand Prix level, and we see it time and again. Looking down the classes, Gonzalez is next in line, Aron Canet is MotoGP quality in my opinion, David Alonso isn’t far away (Spanish-born despite repping Colombian heritage), and Jose Antonio Rueda in Moto3 has won five out of eight to start the season. It’s a conveyor belt.
Matching that in the UK, Northern Europe, Asia and the rest of the world is something we’re going to measure in decades, with a bucketload of lost money to compensate. I’m glad the sport is taking those measures via the talent cups, but it doesn’t mean we should be holding back on talent through elements they can’t control. When your lead commentator has to say: “I’m not anti-Spanish but…”, that’s a grim thing to say about the state of the sport.
The Verdict: 4.5/10 (Meh) – Not a classic on this one. Aragon’s had some superb races over the last few years, and as I’ve said many a time, downforce based racing takes some of that away. I’ll give Franco Morbidelli and Fermin Aldeguer this – they tried! So bonus half point there, but sadly, Marc Marquez meant this wasn’t really worth watching beyond a highlight reel. 9/10 recommendations for Moto2 and 3 mind you. See you at Mugello.
PS: If anyone has a link to a 2XL Mugello Special Ducati polo shirt, let me know. I will trade my first born for one…
