The Spanish Marc Márquez has added his fifth 'full' of the season by winning the 'sprint' race and the MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix at the 'Mobility Resort Motegi' circuit.
With this unappealable victory by Marc Márquez, the nine-time motorcycle world champion is just two points behind the championship leader, the Spanish Jorge Martín, second, with his teammate, the Italian Marco Bezzecchi, third.
Bezzecchi had to defend himself from the final attack of his compatriot Enea Bastianini, who had to settle for fourth position after a spectacular comeback in which he performed several record-breaking fast laps.
Problems with tire consumption during the sprint race caused performance problems for quite a few drivers and this forced the organization to extend the duration of Sunday's 'warm up' from ten to twenty minutes, so that all drivers could test the hardest compound provided by the sole supplier Michelin.
After seeing the deterioration suffered by the rear tires of riders like Jorge Martín or Francesco 'Pecco' Bagnaia in that sprint race, no one hesitated to go out to the race with the hardest tire on the rear axle of their bikes, and the intermediate one on the front.
Furthermore, even before starting, two riders knew they had few options to fight for the podium, the Spanish Alex Márquez, sanctioned with two 'long laps' for causing Pedro Acosta and Fabio di Giannantonio to fall in the 'sprint', and the Frenchman Johann Zarco, with the same sanction for trying to start his bike after suffering a fall.
This time Jorge Martín was not surprised at the start by Marc Márquez, winner of the sprint race who held second position ahead of the Italian Marco Bezzecchi and his brother Alex.
Martín pushed hard in those initial laps to try to get in the way of Marc Márquez who always needs a few laps in the long race to achieve his best pace.
Behind him, the one who was not going through his best moment was Pedro Acosta, who saw how he was surpassed by the Italian Enea Bastianini, the Japanese Ai Ogura and the Spanish Raúl Fernández.
In just three laps four drivers stood out from the rest, Jorge Martín, Marc Márquez, Marco Bezzecchi and Alex Márquez, who was already notified at that time of the obligation to comply with his sanction, which he began to do on the fifth lap to return in fifth place.
From that moment on, Alex Márquez tried to recover as much ground as possible before completing the second 'long lap' so as not to give too much of an advantage to his rivals, which he did on the seventh lap to return ninth behind the Brazilian Diogo Moreira, who a few laps later crashed on turn nine.
Ahead, Jorge Martín and Marc Márquez were leaving behind a Marco Bezzecchi who did not give the impression of being able to keep up with their pace and with the Ducati rider completely 'hooked' in the slipstream of the Aprilia of the MotoGP world champion in 2024.
In fact, Marc Márquez, shortly before reaching the halfway point of the race, scheduled for 24 laps, already held the fastest lap record, controlling the distances with respect to Jorge Martín at all times to more or less two tenths of a second.
Jorge Martín was not far behind and broke Marc Márquez's fastest lap record, but only to see how in his wake the nine-time world champion recovered it by thousandths of a second.
It was on the eleventh lap, one before the halfway point of the race, when Marc Márquez decided to overtake Jorge Martín to take the lead of the race for the first time and both with almost two seconds over the third place finisher, Marco Bezzecchi.
Five laps from the end, Alex Márquez's race ended, when Acosta had to deal with the two Trackhouse Aprilia riders, Raúl Fernández and Ai Ogura, without the 'Tiburón' from Puerto de Mazarrón giving up the fifth place for which the trio were fighting.
In front, Marc Márquez had consolidated first place, with more than a second ahead of Jorge Martín and more than 2.5 seconds over Marco Bezzecchi, who crossed the finish line in that order.
Fourth place went to Bastianini, ahead of Fernández, Ogura, Acosta, Bagnaia, Fermín Aldeguer and Luca Marini, who completed the top ten positions.
