{"id":222084,"date":"2025-10-18T06:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T06:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/222084\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T06:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T06:33:07","slug":"marco-bezzecchis-penalty-fear-for-australian-motogp-it-looks-easy-but-its-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/222084\/","title":{"rendered":"Marco Bezzecchi\u2019s penalty fear for Australian MotoGP: \u2018It looks easy, but it\u2019s not\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MotoGP Australian Grand Prix sprint winner Marco Bezzecchi admits concern for his double long lap penalty coming for Sunday\u2019s race as the loop \u2018looks easy, but it\u2019s not\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The factory <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/teams\/aprilia-racing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aprilia<\/a> rider was hit with a double long lap penalty for Sunday\u2019s grand prix at Phillip Island for a collision with Marc Marquez in Indonesia two weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/995158\/marco-bezzecchi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marco Bezzecchi<\/a> has spent the weekend practicing going through the long lap lane on the outside of Turn 4 and is on course to lose at least two seconds per visit on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking after his sprint win from second on the grid on Saturday, Bezzecchi admits the long lap loop at Phillip Island is harder than it looks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt will be tough for sure because I tried the long lap many times this weekend,\u201d he told TNT Sport.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt looks easier, but it\u2019s not, because it\u2019s super tight and it\u2019s in a very tricky place, because corner four is tricky even when you don\u2019t have to do the long lap.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, I try my best to lose as little time as I can and try to bring home the best result. I will be happy if I do my best. So, let\u2019s try it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bezzecchi riding with painkillers to sprint win<\/p>\n<p>Bezzecchi struck a seagull as he began the warm-up lap, which left a stricken bird stuck to the front of his Aprilia.<\/p>\n<p>But he says the biggest issue he faced was a lack of front-end feeling on his RS-GP in the early stages, with the Italian trailing Trackhouse\u2019s Raul Fernandez until lap 10 of 13.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very, very happy,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1084415\/1\/2025-australian-motogp-marco-bezzecchi-wins-sprint-despite-seagull-strike\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he said of his third sprint win of 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a tough beginning because Raul was incredibly fast, and I was struggling a bit with the front tyre at the beginning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI lost the front a couple of times, and also when I was able to catch Raul, I made a mistake and took a wobble in braking at Turn 10.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, I lost a lot of ground. Fortunately, I was managing the tyres well, so I tried to push again and catch him. And fortunately, I was able to ride pretty fast. So, very happy with the performance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bezzecchi has been struggling with back pain following the crash with Marquez at Mandalika, and admits he raced with painkillers on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow I have painkillers for the sprint because I wanted to be safe to perform in the best way possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, I\u2019m struggling a bit, considering that this track is super demanding on the back because of the long corners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s going a bit worse than I expected, but now I have to try to make the last effort physically for tomorrow. So, I try to recover as much as I can this afternoon and be ready for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MotoGP Australian Grand Prix sprint winner Marco Bezzecchi admits concern for his double long lap penalty coming for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[18009,10669,64,63,10732,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-222084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-aprilia","9":"tag-aprilia-racing","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-marco-bezzecchi","13":"tag-motor","14":"tag-motor-sports","15":"tag-motosport","16":"tag-motosports","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222084","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=222084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}