While brother Marc closes in on the 2025 MotoGP title, the fight for runner-up remains wide open.<\/p>\n
Alex Marquez<\/a>, 175 points behind Marc, has occupied second place in the standings for much of the season.<\/p>\n But a slump in recent results has left the Gresini Ducati<\/a> rider with only 19 points across the last three rounds at Brno, Red Bull Ring and Balaton Park, compared to 34 points he scored at Jerez alone, or the 29-point hauls from double runner-up finishes at Buriram, Termas, COTA, Aragon and Mugello.<\/p>\n That dip should have made him vulnerable to Marc\u2019s team-mate Francesco Bagnaia<\/a>, but the factory Ducati rider has also struggled in recent races and remains 52 points behind with eight rounds left.<\/p>\n Instead, momentum has shifted towards Aprilia\u2019s Marco Bezzecchi<\/a>, who has amassed 67 points in the last three events to cut the gap to Bagnaia to 31. KTM\u2019s Pedro Acosta <\/a>has almost mirrored Bezzecchi\u2019s recent scoring but still sits another 33 points further back.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cPecco still the opponent for second\u201d<\/p>\n For now, Alex continues to see Bagnaia as his main rival.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this moment Pecco, because he’s more close than Bezzecchi,\u201d Alex said at Balaton Park.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Bezzecchi has been super fast from the beginning of the season, he was just missing the qualifying. And it’s true that in the last races, he has been also quite fast in the qualifying. So it will be interesting to see how fast he can recover.<\/p>\n \u201cBut still I feel that Pecco is the opponent for second in the championship, but it will be interesting also to see Bezzecchi and Aprilia, how they develop.\u201d<\/p>\n While Bagnaia and Bezzecchi are on the latest factory machines, Alex doesn\u2019t expect any further changes to his year-old GP24.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cThe base that we have is more or less the same now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMany riders changed manufacturers\u201d<\/p>\n Alex also pointed to rider changes at Aprilia and KTM as a reason for their slower start to the season.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this year can be a strange situation, because many riders have changed manufacturers. I think for that reason Aprilia in the beginning were not fast with Bezzecchi. Because they were missing the qualifying, but on race pace, they were already super fast,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the KTMs, with Enea [Bastianini], with Maverick [Vinales], from the moment KTM did a step with Maverick, all the other KTM riders made a step. These are things that create the atmosphere of being fast.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be interesting if we can improve a little bit, but if not, I think we have a good base and I think if we put everything together – like we did during all the weekend in Austria until Sunday – we are able to fight for podiums.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n To secure a Marquez one-two in the world championship, Alex can afford to lose no more than 6.5 points per weekend on average to Bagnaia, 10.4 to Bezzecchi and 14.5 to Acosta.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While brother Marc closes in on the 2025 MotoGP title, the fight for runner-up remains wide open. Alex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[8454,64,63,7607,8455,10732,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-110830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-alex-marquez","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-francesco-bagnaia","tag-gresini-racing-motogp","tag-marco-bezzecchi","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}