Alex Marquez admitted he twice crashed while attempting to replicate team-mate Fermin Aldeguer’s riding lines, after the 19-year-old rookie stormed to a maiden MotoGP victory at the Indonesian Grand Prix.
Following Saturday’s heartbreak, when Marco Bezzecchi snatched the Sprint win on the final lap, Aldeguer was untouchable on Sunday. He seized the lead on lap 7, and with Bezzecchi eliminated in a first-lap collision with Marc Marquez, stretched his advantage to over nine seconds before easing off on the final lap.
Alex joined his Gresini team-mate on the podium in third, behind KTM’s Pedro Acosta but almost eight seconds adrift of Aldeguer’s dominant pace.
“From FP2, Fermin was able to be really fast with the soft [tyre]. He was really consistent and carried huge corner speed,” Alex explained. “I think his natural way of riding was really perfect for this track, and better than everybody else in Ducati here. He was making the difference, even though the bikes and setups are similar.”
The Spaniard admitted he tried to mimic Aldeguer’s lines in practice and qualifying — with painful results.
“He was able to ride in a really free way. We saw it on the data. I think he crashed just in FP1, but that was a rookie mistake. When I tried two times to make those lines, I crashed two times! So I was not able to make that,” Alex laughed. “Just for his riding style, he was much better than us. But it was really nice to have that reference all weekend.”
Aldeguer’s performance was backed by the stopwatch. His best race lap was nearly half a second quicker than Fabio Di Giannantonio’s next-best effort and eclipsed Enea Bastianini’s 2023 lap record. Despite backing off late on — losing 1.5s on the final tour — his winning time of 41m07.651s was almost identical to Jorge Martin’s 41m04.389s victory on the GP24 last year.
Alex also noted that Aldeguer’s breakthrough win marked a milestone for Gresini: every rider to have raced with Ducati machinery for the satellite squad since 2022 — Enea Bastianini, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Marc Marquez, Alex himself, and now Aldeguer — has now stood on the top step of a MotoGP podium.
