Marco Bezzecchi could be forgiven for having the equivalent of a nose bleed. After all, the Italian hadn’t seen MotoGP from these heights for his four-year, 83-start premier-class career before the Thailand Grand Prix, which he arrived at in a most unusual position.
Overwhelming favourite.
Every MotoGP qualifying, practice and race LIVE and ad-break free from lights out to the chequered flag. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >
The Italian rider won the last two races of 2025 in Portugal and Valencia, and proved the fastest man in pre-season testing at the same Thailand track set to host the 2026 season-opener. On an Aprilia that looked to have kicked on from its promising finish to last season, and with last year’s world champion Marc Marquez far from 100 per cent fit as he returned from right shoulder surgery late last year, ‘Bez’ was understandably the bookies’ favourite coming into Buriram.
His response was to – surprisingly, needlessly – crash three times in a matter of hours on Saturday, once at the end of morning practice, again after he’d already secured pole position in qualifying, and once more when he fell from the lead of the sprint race on just the second lap.
Zero points from a weekend of domination stung, but rather than beat himself up, Bezzecchi dusted himself off and engaged his brain.
MORE MOTOGP NEWS
RACE REPORT Italian makes amends as champ has scary retirement
THE SHOWMAN AND THE QUICK KID The link between MotoGP’s rookie odd couple
The result – a dominant Grand Prix win on Sunday where he led all 26 laps in searing heat that saw the track temperature at a baked Buriram top out at 55 degrees – meant Bezzecchi earned a slice of MotoGP history.
Never before had an Aprilia rider won three Grands Prix on the bounce. His lights-to-flag win made it 78 straight laps in first place. And the Bezzecchi-Pedro Acosta (KTM)-Raul Fernandez (Aprilia) podium was the first time in 89 Grands Prix dating back to the 2021 British GP that not a single Ducati rider finished on the rostrum.
Whisper it, but is Ducati’s dominant era – Ducati riders have won the past four titles – over? Bezzecchi wasn’t going that far on Sunday in Thailand, but was more certain what had seen him make amends for his Saturday stinker in quick order.
“After yesterday, it was important to try to reset and try to bounce back in the race,” he said.
“I knew my pace was good and I knew that if I was going to start in a good way, trying to stay a bit more calm, that it was possible to put a small gap in the beginning. Fortunately my strategy was good and I was able to manage a bit the gap.”
As the 27-year-old saw it, not all three Saturday crashes were created equal.
“Yesterday was a day where maybe I was asking too much,” he mused.
“In the morning [practice] I was fast and I made a mistake in turn three because I wanted to put the bike in [the corner] anyway. I wasn’t maybe thinking enough, and this kind of small mistake removed a bit of confidence.
“The crash in qualifying was the only one that I understand better, because when you are pushing for a time attack you are allowed to make this kind of mistakes. The one in the sprint … maybe I got a bit too nervous, I tried to cut too much the corner.”
Bezzecchi – originally hired to, unofficially at least, play a supporting role as teammate to 2024 world champion Jorge Martin last year before the Spaniard’s year unravelled through a succession of painful injuries and an ugly contract dispute – has unequivocally become the Noale’s factory’s leading light, but the rate of improvement of the RS-GP machine year on year was plain to see in Buriram.
Fernandez finished third in both the sprint and Grand Prix, while Martin was fourth on Sunday to match his best Grand Prix showing for all of 2025. Fernandez’s teammate Ai Ogura, who starred on debut as a rookie at Buriram last year, stormed through the pack late to finish fifth, giving Aprilia four bikes in the top five. Ducati’s best finisher was VR46 rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, 16 seconds adrift of the win in sixth.
While Bezzecchi is clearly MotoGP’s form man, his rise to become a rider capable of winning a trio of races in succession owes itself to a combination of speed and caution, never wanting to get too far ahead of himself.
“Aprilia made a good job this winter, they have been working super hard through all the break to try to bring us some important items to try, but I have to say that it’s too early to say [Aprilia has an advantage],” he said.
“It’s only one race in the championship which is very long, so let’s try to keep ourselves calm, super hungry to make the best every weekend that we can.”
“We know we will struggle at some point, it’s normal, everyone does. So let’s approach race by race and try to stay in this mood that is super positive.”
‘THE REAR TYRE EXPLODED’: MARQUEZ EXPLAINS SCARE BEFORE STOP
Marc Marquez’s title defence – already compromised to begin the season as he raced the clock to be fit for Thailand after right shoulder surgery and missing the final five Grands Prix of last season – began with a dramatic exit on Sunday after his rear wheel rim failed at over 170km/h with five laps remaining.
MORE MOTOGP NEWS
THAILAND SPRINT REPORT Ducati boss seethes after penalty hands Acosta victory
‘FITTEST EVER’ The F1 link that has Miller primed to push Yamaha forward
The seven-time MotoGP champion was launching a late assault on podium pair Acosta and Fernandez when he suffered a high-speed rear puncture after he clattered over the kerb into the trackside run-off at turn four, the rear tyre erupting as the Spaniard managed to avoid a massive crash before coming to a halt.
Afterwards, Marquez – who led the championship after every round from Thailand last year, where he won both the sprint and Grand Prix – was shocked by the extent of the damage to his bike’s rear wheel.
“That kerb, I jumped 100 times in the [Thailand] test for example or during practice, and what happened now never happened [before],” he said.
“Normally, those kerbs are made that you can jump over [them] in a good way … you need to be careful when you jump [back] in. I jumped out, but when I jumped out, I felt already that the rear tyre exploded, with a big hit also on the rim. Mid-corner already I felt like the rear slid a bit, more than usual … I said ‘OK, I don’t want to take any risk, even if I lose time I jump out of the track and I will jump in again’. But that safe way today was not the best decision. I think it was fully unlucky to destroy the rim. It was super strange.”
Marquez was rapid in Buriram despite not being physically at his best, and his famed late-race pace and tyre management would have seen him in the podium mix even if Bezzecchi was long gone at the front of the race.
“Riding in a strange way [with injury limitations], I was there … but it’s true that in the end we scored zero points in the race – zero points are zero points,” he said.
“The first part of the race I was trying to manage my physical condition and also the tyres. When 10 laps [were left] I gave everything and I was closing the gap especially to Raul, and to Acosta also, I was catching him step by step.”
Marquez’s brother and fellow Ducati rider Alex Marquez, who was second to his elder sibling in the Thailand sprint and Grand Prix last year en route to finishing runner-up in the championship, left the opening round without a single point after finishing 11th in the sprint and crashing out of eighth place with four laps left on Sunday.
ACOSTA CAPITALISES TO TAKE CHAMPIONSHIP LEAD
After the Sunday shocker for the Marquez family and with Bezzecchi taking zero points from Saturday after his sprint crash, KTM’s Acosta leads the world championship standings after Thailand, which came as a pleasant surprise for both manufacturer and rider as their three-year association likely comes to an end in November.
Acosta, 21, is set to join Marquez at the factory Ducati team in an all-Spanish multi-generational dream team in 2026, and the two future teammates staged a brilliant battle for the win of Saturday’s sprint, which was only decided when Marquez was ordered to drop a position by race stewards on the final lap for “irresponsible riding” after he’d run Acosta out wide on the final corner on the penultimate lap of the 13-lap race.
It was Acosta’s first, long-awaited “win” of his MotoGP career – sprint victories don’t count as official wins in the sport’s record books – but Acosta outdid himself on Sunday over the 26-lap distance from sixth on the grid, winning a brilliant three-way fight with Marquez and Martin, MotoGP’s two most recent champions, and then pouncing on an ailing Fernandez late to finish second and take a seven-point world championship lead to the next round in Brazil in three weeks’ time.
It was Acosta’s 11th Grand Prix podium without a race win – only American Colin Edwards (12 podiums with zero wins from 2003-14) has more visits to the rostrum without seeing the view from the top step – but rather than lament not doing the double in Thailand, Acosta relished the battle with his more acclaimed compatriots, and felt a shift in his mindset had begun to pay off.
“Super great battles with Marc yesterday, and super great battle with Jorge today,” he beamed.
“I really enjoy these kinds of races, even if we were losing time … I was enjoying a lot. I enjoyed it like my Moto3 days. It’s true that I was taking a bit more pace and I was catching Raul [Fernandez] … with seven laps to go, it was now or never. We are working quite okay in the box, maintaining the calm and this is making things a lot easier.”
Acosta, whose right-hand man at KTM is crew chief Paul Trevathan, praised the veteran New Zealand engineer for his role in managing his typically sky-high expectations to a reasonable level that has taken the negative emotion out of his down days.
Acosta finished 2025 with a surge – he took podiums in three of the final five Grands Prix and four of the last five sprints – and his Thailand weekend only confirmed that step in the right direction.
“He [Trevathan] was pushing me in video calls all the [northern hemisphere] winter to be calm and to don’t think so much, because maybe the expectation last year was quite high and was not helping,” Acosta said.
“Last year, more at the beginning of the year, I was getting quite … not nervous, but when the situation was not under control, I was always making mistakes or crashing or going wide, and that was not the way to build confidence.
“Now, maybe I’m in more a chill mode, let’s say. When the bad moments come, I use more the brain … maybe this is the biggest difference.”
‘NO MAGIC’: MILLER, YAMAHA RIDERS SILENT AFTER HORROR SHOW
Yamaha took the highly unusual step of cancelling the media debriefs of all four of its riders, including Australia’s Jack Miller, after the Japanese factory’s first race of the season was a disaster at Buriram, leaving the company’s managing director Paolo Pavesio to face the press after the brand’s new V4 engine project was embarrassingly off the pace in Sunday’s 26-lap race.
Fabio Quartararo, the 2021 world champion for Yamaha, was the company’s best finisher on Sunday in 14th place, over half a minute behind Bezzecchi, while Miller slumped to 18th place by the chequered flag, 47.848secs behind the race-winning Aprilia rider and ahead of only Ducati test rider Michele Pirro, who was standing in at Gresini Ducati for the injured Fermin Aldeguer.
After years of campaigning an inline-four configuration engine – and as the only manufacturer to do so after Suzuki quit the series in 2022 – Yamaha fast-tracked its V4 engine project into the final year of MotoGP’s 1000cc regulations for 2026, bringing it in line with rivals Ducati, Aprilia, KTM and Honda.
Pre-season testing suggested the Thailand circuit layout – where the opening two sectors of the lap are made up almost entirely of straights – would punish the YZR-M1 machine, with the bikes of Quartararo, teammate Alex Rins, Miller and Pramac Yamaha teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu routinely shipping 10km/h to their rivals in the opening half of the lap.
Sunday’s result was sobering for Yamaha, with Rins in 15th, Razgatlioglu in 17th, and Miller falling towards the back after he’d finished as the leading Yamaha – in 15th – in Saturday’s sprint.
Pavesio said there is no timetable for Yamaha’s expected improvement, another blow to the brand which looks set to lose Quartararo to Japanese rival Honda for the first season of the 850cc regulation set in 2027.
“It’s very difficult to give a number of months .. it’s clear that every time we go on the track, we are discovering things which we have to improve,” Pavesio said.
“We are still understanding the base setting with the machine. I would say yesterday [in the sprint] was not too bad, the gap to the winner was exactly the same gap as last year, but clearly in the long race we have struggled a lot more.
“Now we see very clearly from the first racing weekend what is the gap, and we understand that we have quite a mountain to climb. Our riders gave 110 per cent, the company is giving 110 per cent … but there will be no magic.
“It’s emotionally difficult for everyone, because the riders are the ones who have to deliver in the weekend and are more exposed. Sometimes emotionally it is not easy, but there is nothing that is granted from where we were in the past.”
In a statement issued by his team, Miller said rear tyre wear explained his freefall down the order in the latter stages.
“The bike itself didn‘t feel bad over the distance and physically I felt fine, but from the very beginning I understood we had an issue with the rear tyre. I tried to manage it as best as I could – short-shifting, being smooth, waiting to pick the bike up on the exits – but as the laps went on it became more and more difficult.
“In the end the tyre was completely worn in the centre, and on the straights I couldn’t use more than about one-quarter throttle. It was a tough situation to manage.”
Discussion about this post