Alex Marquez triumphed at the Catalan Grand Prix, fending off his elder brother Marc Marquez to secure his second career MotoGP victory in front of his home crowd.
Starting from pole, Alex briefly lost the lead to Marc but reclaimed it at the beginning of lap 4, determined not to ride in his brother’s shadow. Behind them, KTM’s Pedro Acosta snatched third from Fabio Quartararo, while Enea Bastianini surged from ninth on the grid to take fourth.
The leading quartet began pulling clear, with Quartararo eventually slipping into the grasp of Johann Zarco and Luca Marini. Bastianini soon found a way past Acosta at Turn 1 on lap 11, but he couldn’t stay with the Marquez brothers as the race became a two-man battle.
Marc pushed hard in the closing laps in a bid to overturn his brother’s lead, but Alex managed to stretch the gap to over a second with two laps to go, sealing a decisive 1.74s victory at the flag.
The result delays Marc’s championship coronation, with his lead reduced to 182 points ahead of the Indonesian Grand Prix.
Behind the brothers, Acosta struggled with rear tyre drop-off but clung on to fourth, while Quartararo fought back for fifth, edging Ai Ogura’s Aprilia. Francesco Bagnaia delivered a strong comeback from 21st on the grid, finishing eighth after early crashes from Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio di Giannantonio helped open the door.
