Marc Marquez beat his younger brother Alex to win the Aragon Grand Prix sprint on Saturday, as the reigning MotoGP champion underlined his dominance on home turf and at one of his favourite tracks. Victory also gave Marc a hat-trick of sprint wins at Aragon as the seven-times MotoGP champion moved up to third in the championship standings with 212 points, behind leader Jorge Martin (245) and Marco Bezzecchi (216).
Bezzecchi had claimed pole position with a lap record earlier on Saturday, but he had a poor start off the line, with both Marc and Alex overtaking the Aprilia rider to drop him down to third after turn one in the 11-lap sprint. Once Marc was out in front, there was no catching him as he peeled away with Alex in tow, while Bezzecchi found no opening to attack the two Ducati bikes, which both had medium compound rear tyres compared with the Italian's soft rear tyre.
"I knew that Marco was with the soft tyres so the (best) chance of (winning) the race was at the first corner," Marc said after a record 20th sprint win in MotoGP. "Tomorrow will be a bit of the same, so let's see. Of course, a good start helped a lot and I was riding at a good pace but I saw that the group was also quite fast, especially Alex. Let's see if tomorrow we can improve a bit (in the race) and try to be as consistent as today."
HOME CROWD
The Marquez one-two mirrored last year's Aragon sprint, delighting the home crowd as fans, who had packed into stands bearing the brothers' names, roared as they collected their medals. Marc, a seven-times race winner at Aragon, dived down the inside of turn one to take the lead, nudging Bezzecchi aside and creating a gap that Alex also capitalised on to slip past the Italian.
"I knew Marc and Alex had something more. Unfortunately, I missed a little bit the braking point in the first corner," Bezzecchi said. Behind them, Bezzecchi's teammate Martin lost position while fighting with Trackhouse Racing's Raul Fernandez and KTM's Pedro Acosta. However, Martin eventually managed to find his way past Fernandez. Although Martin finished fifth behind Acosta, he collected enough points to ensure he would retain his championship lead regardless of Sunday's race result.
