BEZZECCHI DOUBTS HE CAN REPEAT HIS SILVERSTONE SPRINT PACE ON SUNDAY

Marco Bezzecchi heads into Sunday’s 20-lap British Grand Prix at Silverstone with doubts about whether he can match the physical effort that carried him to a Sprint podium on Saturday. The Aprilia Racing rider finished third in the Sprint, but he believes the longer race distance will be difficult given how he is feeling after the injuries he suffered at the German MotoGP before the summer break.

Bezzecchi says he “surpassed [his] own expectations” to secure the podium, while admitting he was “super-tired” and “destroyed” after an intense day. Motorsport.com also notes that, despite his return from the Sachsenring injuries, Saturday was always going to be the first real test of his condition. That context has been sharpened by the fact that Bezzecchi underwent surgery during the summer break: he had an operation on his knee and his collarbone following a crash at the Sachsenring just 28 days earlier. He wasn’t able to train again until this week, and even on Saturday he lacked strength in his upper body while dealing with intense knee pain.

Despite those limitations, he fought his way to third in the Sprint and then repeated the result in Sunday’s Grand Prix. While he didn’t have the pace of race winner Raul Fernandez, Bezzecchi finished within a second of teammate Jorge Martin. He also had to defend P3 when Alex Marquez launched an attack that looked like it could take the position. According to Bezzecchi, when Martin overtook him he was already “finished,” and he added that Marquez also got past before the Spaniard’s mistake. Speaking to the Spanish edition of Motorsport.com, Bezzecchi said: “Then Alex made that mistake, and that’s when I felt revitalised, because I wanted a good result.” He explained that Marquez was “super fast” and strong on long corners, and that if the error hadn’t happened it “probably would have been harder for me to get the result,” especially as he was “already noticing the tyre degradation.” He then described the strain of holding on: “I almost fainted, but oh well.”

The weekend’s emotional toll was clear. He was tearful after Saturday’s Sprint and, according to the world feed, it was “difficult to speak” when he gave a brief interview on Sunday. In parc ferme, the 27-year-old stood near his Aprilia mechanics with his hands on his knees, staring at the ground, underlining how physically and mentally exhausted he was.

Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola added further context to the achievement, saying Bezzecchi could “barely walk” before the British GP, and hailing his “big heart” afterwards. Rivola said: “When you see a rider that struggled to walk in the morning and had a race like that, you can imagine how big his heart is.” He also framed the result as a sign of character, calling it an example of the “heart, and the balls” of their riders, and comparing it to Jorge Martin’s similar response last year. Rivola added: “I’m really astonished after what I saw Marco do today.”

Bezzecchi admitted it had been difficult to deal with criticism from the outside and his own doubts, describing the mental switch as: “Putting the helmet on is like putting earplugs in.” He said it was “tough” after the Mugello period, but noted that even when he was struggling he had still produced “decent performances,” and that in the Sprint a “very, very good start” gave him the chance to fight for a podium. He also referenced the sequence of setbacks: a mistake in Brno, a “big, big crash in Assen” that left him with “just one broken rib” but “all my body was destroyed,” and then Sachsenring where he was competitive before another mistake led to the double injury.

Bezzecchi’s strong showing has promoted him back to P2 in the standings, though he remains 31 points behind Martin.