Saturday in Austin wasn't exactly Marco Bezzecchi’s day. On a day when his teammate Jorge Martin returned to victory in a Sprint race for the first time since the 2024 Malaysian Grand Prix, the Aprilia rider from Romagna threw away a virtually certain podium finish by crashing out with three laps to go. He was in second place, behind Francesco Bagnaia, just after passing the Spaniard. It was a mistake that weighs heavily on Bezzecchi’s weekend; in addition to losing the championship lead, he will also have to serve a two-grid-position penalty in tomorrow’s GP for impeding Marc Marquez’s fast lap in qualifying.
“Another tough Sprint after the one in Thailand? Up until that point, it hadn’t been easy, but things were going well. Unfortunately, I made a mistake under braking and lost the front end. So yes, it was tough,” commented Marco, before discussing the crash that ended his race prematurely.
“It was a matter of giving it my all in general, not catching up to Pecco,” he underlined. “It was the first lap where I finally had a bit of open space, so I tried to brake a little later and lost balance on the bike. Obviously, I was pushing: I saw I had a fast and consistent pace, so I tried to push as hard as I could.”
Was the mistake making the bike unstable or trying to force it into the corner anyway?
“Both. I braked about 7 or 8 meters later, and in doing so, I destabilized the rear. With this ‘wobble,’ let’s say I wasn’t able to slow down enough, but I still entered the corner and lost the front,” explained Bez, who didn’t want to comment on what happened in qualifying with Marc Marquez: “That’s the way it is: in the end, these are the rules, I accept them, and I don’t want to comment on it.”
The man of the moment, the rider from Romagna finds himself once again in the position of having to put Saturday’s events behind him. “That’s the way it is right now; I can’t do anything but try to focus on tomorrow. That’s what I have to do,” he acknowledged.
Speaking instead about having a teammate to compete against on the track, Bezzecchi stated: “It doesn't change anything, for me it’s the same: I’m competing against 21 riders, not just one. If we look at it in terms of development, the fact that Jorge is fast is a good thing. Sure, he’s a tough rival because he’s very fast, but in the end, it’s positive. It’s good motivation for me, and I have to take the positive from it. Obviously, the level is pretty good right now, but we always have to work 100% every day to try to improve. So that’s my mindset right now.”
Speaking specifically about Martin’s performance, he added: “I’m not surprised. I’m happy for him; he deserved it. We were right there , and I’m really happy for him because he’s been through some tough times. I hope we can have another great race together tomorrow. We're the favorites for the race after today? Maybe Jorge will be, but I won’t because I crashed in the end. It’s a different situation.”
As in Brazil, Marco could use the fact that he’s running medium tyres in the GP to his advantage .
“I hope so,” he said. “Actually, we haven’t done much running on the mediums, apart from FP1 and a little bit this morning. The mediums aren’t usually bad, but you can never be sure. So now we’ll go back to the pits and try to get back to work to find everything we can improve. Then tomorrow morning we’ll try the medium tyre again and see.”