Dre's Race Review - MotoGP's 2025 San Marino GP

Rest peacefully, Ricky Hatton.

“I do my talking riding bikes.”

Welcome back to Dre’s Race Review, glad you could join me back again for a quieter week in the Italian hills. Welcome back to Misano and the Grand Prix of San Marino and the Rimini Riviera. Rolls right off the tongue. Anyway, with it, we had a sweeping weekend where Marco Bezzecchi and Marc Marquez went to war once again and this time, the Spaniard came out on top. Never heard that one before. Anyway, let’s get into it.

“They Define Themselves.”

It started out like a pretty typical 2025 MotoGP weekend. Marc Marquez looked pretty comfortable in Friday practice and on top fo the leaderboards, with the VR46’s training ground family all in the mix as well, with Marco Bezzecchi, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Luca Marini and Franco Morbidelli all in play. Qualifying was a little atypical, Fabio Quartararo does what he does best and make miracles out of his Yamaha to get on the front row, with Alex Marquez there too, taking advantage of Misano’s third sector and its incredibly fast right handers. But it was Bez on pole on the Aprilia when it mattered most, with Marc Marquez down in 4th.

The Sprint led to another really strong Marquez start, leapfrogging Fabio and Alex to go into second. He couldn’t force the issue on Bez straight away, so he settled down and eased off on his tires before mounting another attack with 5 laps to go. He got to the back of Bez, and his Aprilia ran wide at the Turn 5-6 chicane complex, with Marc switching back and taking the lead on the run to Sector 2. But that same lap, he gets to Turn 15, comes in too hot, and brakes a bit too much, and he loses the front and goes into the airfence. Cue Dorna cutting to the Italian fans jeering and celebrating their nemesis hitting the deck for the first time in a Sprint race all season.

Bez would go on to take Sprint victory, his first Sprint win since the 2023 Dutch TT ahead of Alex Marquez and Diggia. Of course, the Internet was always going to go mad at this one, and they didn’t disappoint. This is sporting beef of the highest level now. Arsenal vs Manchester United. Rossi fans still can’t stand Marc Marquez for beating their God in 2015 via the same unsporting and petty tactics that Rossi himself championed in his prime. Marquez fans want to take a moral high ground over the idea that you don‘t mock a crashed rider. 

Me personally? I wouldn’t boo someone in Motorsport if they win, but the pantomime environment of heroes and villains we love to tell stories with in sport make it a natural part of human nature. Motorsport’s culture for me has always felt like it was wrongly “above” something like that. It feels classist compared to Europe’s most popular sport, football. When the Premier League came to prominence in 1992, the PR push from Sky was about cleaning up the game after the era of football hooliganism was rife in the 80’s between clubs fanbases. So booing’s for the thugs, combined with the dangerous, gladiator mantra we associate with Motorsport, has had people for a while thinking that means booing is beneath us. I disagree. I’ve seen enough F1 fanbase warfare to say we’re every bit as shitty as other sporting audiences, we just come with extra ego.

These sorts of rivalries are what make sports what they are. If you’ve spent 9 years giving someone shit for beating your mans, what’s a 10th? And the Marquez camp probably needs to acknowledge that that’s an audience you’re never going to convince otherwise. Because why question the man they call God? Kill the non-believer. 

Welcome to sports. And the beautiful thing about them is that they can affect the way our athletes compete. Because that crash lit a fire in Marquez’s belly.

The race itself was a similar tale. Marc immediately got to second and gave Bezzecchi chase. Couldn’t make the quick pass, so bided his time. Got close again and this time, Bez ran wide and opened the door for a Marquez pass at half-distance at Turn 7. Cue a furious cat and mouse game with the gap never growing to more than seven tenths of a second. The pace at the end of the race was a qualifying stint. Both men put down 31.2’s in the final five laps, running at a sensational pace. Alex Marquez was seven seconds behind in a comfortable third having been able to keep up in the early going.

In the end, Bez couldn’t get close enough to really put a move on Marc for the win. In a similar race to Assen, Marc was fast where it mattered most. Sectors 1 and 2, and then 15 and 16 at the end to keep that gap around the half second mark. 

We have to give Bez his flowers. Misano was arguably his strongest race yet, blistering pace, big risk and determination. The Aprilia is here and it can compete with Marc Marquez at his absolute maximum. The 2023 version of him we saw is very much alive and well as he becomes a talismanic rider for the other improving Italian factory.

But that one mistake that Marc made in the Sprint, was flipped the other way here. Marc was flawless in the race, and he admitted after the fact that he had extra motivation from Saturday’s crash. Marc is obsessed with winning, he craves it, and when he doesn’t, he always tries extra hard to make up for it. And this win was a statement. His sixth at Misano. His 99th in Grand Prix racing. The all-time single-season MotoGP points record, and his first match point for the title in Japan, where outsourcing his brother by three points will be all he needs for World Championship #9. And how else to celebrate in Rossi’s back yard by recreating the Lionel Messi holding the shirt celebration in front of the very fans who boo’ed him a day earlier. 

“I do my talking, riding bikes”. Middle finger that one.

The Lightning Round

No, I wasn’t joking, Marc Marquez has 512 points with six weekends left. Jorge Martin won the 2024 title with 508. 

KTM were not at the races this weekend. Bad enough the extra rear grip at Misano meant the bikes were pushing their front ends away from where they wanted to be, but not one, but two chain failures for Brad Binder in the Sprint and Pedro Acosta in the Grand Prix is rather embarrassing for the Austrian factory. Although I admit, it was funny seeing Acosta giving his KTM the middle finger as he walked past its corpse.

Another double donut for Pecco Bagnaia after sinking outside the Top 15 in the Sprint, and crashing in the Grand Prix at the hairpin. “I’m living a nightmare”, said the World Champion. A genuine question, just how tenable is this relationship? Because Bez just took 32 points out of him and is within striking distance of third in the standings. Is Pecco about to get beaten by an Aprilia?!

Yamaha’s V4 made its competitive debut this weekend via Augusto Fernandez, and it was less than 2% off the best in the field, and only 1.2 seconds off of pole position. A very promising sign that the bike is already competitive. Shame they were a minute off the win on Sunday, but priceless data nonetheless. 

Hmm. Reports are rumbling from the man with the van weekend procedures are slowly changing. We got a new pre-race ceremony where the riders are front and centre with the big wigs as the national anthem plays, with fines starting at 500 euros if missed. Very F1, but at least it ain’t 60G’s like what Carlos Sainz was facing in Japan earlier this year. 

The big one is rumblings that Moto3 and Moto2 are going to be put further on the backburner*. More temporary garages and smaller housing the teams in the paddock as MotoGP takes a grander stage. Also talk that they might get more designed TV airtime away from the smaller series. Not a good sign for an intermediate and lightweight class that are already struggling for sponsors and may have to resort to taking paying riders rather than best available to keep themselves on the grid. Reminder: This isn’t F3/F2 with more of a means to an end of getting riders into F1. These are World Championships in their own right and deserve to be treated as such. 

Speaking of which, MotoE is on hiatus after this season ends. A genuine shame. Look I get it, electric technology is never going to move the masses at large, we’ve seen Formula E fade in relevance across its decade as a World Championship, the Rally Raid has been swapped out for Hydrogen and sticking Elise Christie on a scooter didn’t move people either.  But this was a series that had some of the best action in the paddock and it always felt like it was under promoted. Moving all of their social coverage off the main MotoGP accounts and starting over from scratch is a death sentence. It’s exactly what I had to do with the Motorsport Network’s social coverage for MotoGP when I inherited that role. It didn’t work. People ain’t buying electric bikes, and they weren’t here for their riders. 

Also, Dorna’s TV direction needs some tweaking. Bit too much focus on Marquez and Bezzecchi, not enough on the fights further back, no replay for how Zarco and Mir crashed on the opening lap and could we please not cut to Rossi every time Marquez does something relevant? We know exactly what they’re doing and it isn’t helping*.

The Verdict: 6.5/10 (Decent) - I enjoyed this one. There’s something I do enjoy about a tense race and seeing the two fastest riders in MotoGP at the moment ride at 100% of their powers. Sometimes, the one mistake is the story and that’s good enough for me. See you in Japan.