MotoGP Valencia GP: Alex Marquez dominates sprint from Pedro Acosta

Acosta couldn’t keep up with Marquez in the second half of the race, but bagged yet another podium finish in second, with Fabio di Giannantonio finishing third.

At lights out, Bezzecchi got a poor launch from pole position, allowing Marquez to grab the lead into Turn 1 and Acosta to snatch second from him at the following corner.

The Aprilia rider continued to tumble down the order on the soft front tyre, settling into sixth behind the Yamaha of Fabio Quartararo at the end of the opening lap.

This allowed Marquez and Acosta to run away at the front, but there was no repeat of their epic duel from Portimao, with the former pulling out a lead of over a second by lap 6 of 12.

The 29-year-old eventually cruised to the chequered flag by 1.1s, as his world champion brother Marc Marquez watched on from the pits after returning to the paddock for the first time since his Indonesia crash. Acosta took the chequered flag in second place, leapfrogging his Ducati counterpart Francesco Bagnaia to fourth place in the riders’ standings.

Meanwhile, VR46’s di Giannantonio grabbed the final spot on the podium in third, passing Raul Fernandez at Turn 6 with just three laps to run after a race-long battle with the Trackhouse rider. Fernandez also came under pressure from a recovering Bezzecchi in the final lap of the race, but held on to finish as the top Aprilia in fourth.

Franco Morbidelli ended up sixth for VR46, while Quartararo slipped to seventh after losing places to both Bezzecchi and Morbidelli late on. A rapid opening lap allowed Brad Binder to finish eighth, having started 15th, while the championship point went to Trackhouse rookie Ai Ogura.

Honda failed to score a single point in the sprint after Joan Mir lost the front of his factory RC213V on lap two and took his team-mate Luca Marini along with him. The Japanese marque’s best finisher was LCR rider Johann Zarco in 10th.

Jorge Martin ran as high as 11th in the early stages on his comeback, but dropped to 22nd and last after he ran wide on lap 4 while trying to avoid Zarco.

Fermin Aldeguer and Jack Miller came together on lap three, an incident for which the Pramac rider was told to drop three positions. But after failing to serve the penalty in the required period, he was issued a long-lap penalty, which left him 12th - one spot behind Aldeguer.