MARQUEZ WINS QATAR SPRINT AFTER BEZZECCHI CLASH AS DI GIANNANTONIO CHALLENGES HIS ACCOUNT

Marco Bezzecchi’s Qatar MotoGP Sprint ended in a crash after contact with Marc Marquez, costing the polesitter a chance to turn his strong weekend pace into victory and ending his hopes of winning the championship.

Bezzecchi had set a lap record earlier on Saturday and delivered two laps good enough for pole, beating title leader Marquez in qualifying. He led the original start before the race was stopped following Francesco Bagnaia’s opening-lap crash. At the restart, a wheelie cost Bezzecchi acceleration and allowed Marquez to take the lead.

The clash came at Turn 1 on lap four of the 10-lap restart. Marquez had left a gap and then turned back towards the inside as Bezzecchi moved up alongside him. The contact triggered Marquez’s airbag; Bezzecchi lost grip and fell. Stewards investigated and ruled that no further action was necessary.

The riders disagreed over how the collision happened. Marquez said he had done nothing unusual and had taken that line on every lap, while Bezzecchi said he had tried to hold his line and could not avoid the contact. “At the end, the one that crashed was me, but it’s like this. So we move forward, and we try to bounce back tomorrow,” Bezzecchi told TNT.

A behind-the-scenes video showed Fabio Di Giannantonio challenging Marquez over the incident. “Man, you have to look before closing the line like that. He was on the inside,” the VR46 rider told him. Marquez replied that his line was nothing unusual; Di Giannantonio countered that Bezzecchi had gone up the inside and that the impact was hard. Jorge Martin appeared to defend Marquez, beginning, “No, he was the one who,” before being cut off.

Former MotoGP rider Dani Pedrosa also viewed the collision as a racing incident, but stressed the importance of consistent decisions. He said Marquez had left a gap before returning to the inside and should check that no rider was there. Bezzecchi, Pedrosa noted, was close to the inside and could not see whether Marquez would turn back. “The contact wasn’t that hard, but it wasn’t that soft either,” he said, pointing to Marquez’s deployed airbag and Bezzecchi’s loss of grip. Pedrosa described it as “a racing incident” that “took the favourite out of the race.”

Pedrosa said the key issue was ensuring riders could understand how similar incidents would be judged in future. “What matters is that there’s consistency in penalties or non-penalties for these types of actions,” he said, so riders know what to expect when contact occurs.

Bezzecchi said his pace had been strong enough to fight for the win, though he could not know whether he would have won. “The first start was very good, everything was going perfectly. At the second start I had a small wheelie and lost a little. Even so, the race was going very well — until the crash,” he said. He called it “not the sprint I wanted” after a strong qualifying and weekend, and said he would take the best from Saturday into Sunday’s longer race.

Marquez went on to win by 0.862 seconds, with Di Giannantonio passing Martin for second on the final lap. Martin finished third. The victory was Marquez’s 25th in a Sprint, extending his record, and gave him a chance to clinch the title on Sunday. Di Giannantonio’s runner-up finish also put him on the front row for the Grand Prix.

The race had been interrupted after Fermin Aldeguer hit Bagnaia at the final corner on lap one, sending the Ducati rider into a heavy high-side and several rolls through the gravel. Bagnaia was conscious and taken away by ambulance. He later suffered foot fractures and was transferred to hospital to assess whether surgery was needed. Aldeguer received a double long-lap penalty for the restart, which began after a delay of almost 10 minutes with 17 riders.

Marquez leads Martin by 49 points. Bezzecchi, who had taken the championship lead in Brazil and spent eight events at the top, is 79 points behind and can no longer win the title. Marquez can clinch the championship by winning the Grand Prix if Martin scores no points; otherwise, the fight could continue at Portimao. Bezzecchi will start Sunday’s Grand Prix from pole, with Marquez alongside him in second.