Twenty-two riders made up the cast of the 2025 Portuguese Grand Prix. But if we’re honest, 19 of them were mere extras in the piece. The drama that played out at Portimao was all about the three lead players. Three men, each of whom brought his own unique quest to a stage brimming with opportunity in this strange world without Marc Marquez. Three riders hungry to take the last bow on Sunday afternoon.
First up in the dramatis personae was Pedro Acosta. KTM’s factory star had only two races to go in his sophomore year, yet still he hadn’t won a MotoGP race. In a field where all but three others had done so, this was beginning to feel silly for a man rated as one of the top three talents on the grid.
On the back of some impressive podium rides in Asia, he came to Portimao a dozen times more mature than the Acosta who had claimed his first podium at this very track 20 months earlier – in just his second MotoGP race. With circuit form on his side from the junior categories too, Acosta went down on many a betting sheet for the Portuguese GP.
Many in a knackered press room, desperate for a new storyline in round 21 of the longest-ever MotoGP season, also had an Acosta breakthrough on their wishlist.
Then there was Alex Marquez. Nobody had quite understood just how important second place in the championship was to the Gresini Ducati rider until he had wrapped it up in the Malaysian sprint two weeks earlier. He admitted that he had been riding with a burden there – and it was reasonable to imagine the runner-up spot had been on his mind in preceding contests too.
In his first race with the pressure off, on the Sunday at Sepang, the Spaniard had promptly gone out and won. There was every reason to believe that the Marquez who had been so solid early in the season was back, riding with full confidence and freedom.
Perhaps, with the responsibility of carrying family pride alone after sealing that Marquez 1-2 in the championship, we were going to see an even better version of Alex as the season wound up in Iberia – starting in Portugal.
The third leading light at Portimao was Marco Bezzecchi. He had inherited the British Grand Prix early in the year, but it was really at Assen that the combination of ‘Bez’ and the factory Aprilia began to look like a serious challenger for victory. Poles and sprint wins followed as the season wore on and, as we got into the recent flyaway tour, some believed the RS-GP25 was now the best bike on the grid.
Bezzecchi should have won in both Indonesia and Australia, but the clash with Marc Marquez at Mandalika – which led to a penalty at Phillip Island – saw both opportunities go begging. Then came Sepang, the first track Aprilia hadn’t gelled with in a long while. Surely normal service would be resumed at a circuit where Maverick Vinales had won the sprint for the factory in 2024?
"It’s beautiful to see Pedro riding, but also, it’s painful to not see Pedro winning, with this level of riding style" Pol Espargaro
Each of these three stars came into the weekend with something of a trajectory, then. And as they lined up on the grid for the race on Sunday, the plot had only thickened. After two days of track action, there was still a case for any one of them to win the Portuguese Grand Prix.
Acosta had not disappointed when it came to thrusting his talent onto centre stage at Portimao. He was set to start on the front row for the first time in 2025. He had fought hard with Alex Marquez in the Saturday sprint, coming within a tenth of a second of that elusive first win. He had shown defensive nous on a slower bike. And in an unusually strategic contest for a short race, he had the better tyres at the end despite the KTM’s supposed tendency to chew rubber.
Acosta had wowed onlookers yet again, knocking even louder on the door of victory whilst at the same time showing new and improved maturity. If there was one point of weakness, however, it was the final corner: critical for tyres, critical because it goes on forever, critical because it leads onto the front straight. His fellow KTM rider Pol Espargaro summed the situation up well after the sprint.
“I was doing just one thing better than Pedro this weekend – the last corner, the acceleration [there],” said the 34-year-old.
Turn 15 aside, though, the experienced Espargaro could only join the rest of the MotoGP paddock in offering awestruck praise for his countryman.
“If you see how he was braking into Turn 1 with a soft tyre, that was insane! How he’s making the bike turn with his long arms and body… his body position. It’s a riding style, but it’s [also] a tool for him to rotate the bike in a way that is insane… and it’s stopping the bike. It’s beautiful to see Pedro riding, but also, it’s painful to not see Pedro winning, with this level of riding style. But we are getting close…”
Marquez, by contrast, had been the king of the final corner for much of the weekend as well as fast over the full lap. He had been quick out of the blocks on Friday, topping both sessions. Given that a constant threat of rain had made it difficult to run the usual race preparation programme on Friday afternoon, and a damp track had scratched out a further opportunity on Saturday morning, there was little reason to believe anybody could have caught up with Alex.
A mistake in qualifying spoiled the symmetry of having Acosta, Marquez and Bezzecchi lock out the front row, but starting fifth had done Alex no harm in the sprint. With another decent launch aboard the GP24, he would be a danger man. Bezzecchi noted his ability to sustain pace in that last corner.
“The last sector, the last two corners in particular, are super tough and Alex has, since yesterday, been super good there,” said Bezzecchi on Saturday evening. “For one lap, or maybe two, with a new tyre, many of us can make an exploit on the last sector, but Alex is the one who is able to maintain consistency through many laps. So, let’s see what we can do to try to make a step there.”
Bezzecchi had been close enough to Acosta and Marquez in the sprint to have a terrific view of proceedings – but he hadn’t truly been in the contest. And this was something of a surprise, because Bezzecchi had already shown enormous potential. It wasn’t just that he had taken pole position but the fact that he had left plenty out there on his pole tour. His best time, 1m37.556s, was a chunk away from his ‘ideal lap’ of 1m37.280s – he just hadn’t put his best sectors together on the same lap.
The potential he had shown on a pair of soft tyres in qualifying had not been reflected after a hard front was bolted on for the sprint, so Bezzecchi was right – there was work to do overnight. But Aprilia’s lead man had become used to Saturday overtime in 2025, when many an Aprilia weekend has peaked on Sunday. Those looking to stake a penny or two on the Italian would have sat up and taken note when they saw the Sunday morning warm-up times. Bezzecchi was a whopping 0.544s clear of the field.
And so to the main act. Bezzecchi got the drop at the lights, taking the lead ahead of Acosta. Marquez, for his part, did what needed to be done at the start by linking up with his fellow protagonists in third.
"Last night, I understood that I could make a step in terms of pace, seeing the data, seeing my mistakes in the riding. So we worked until late in the night to try to solve everything" Marco Bezzecchi
What would happen now? Bezzecchi had led early on Saturday, after all, and then been relegated to a spectating role. Would Acosta be able to hold up Marquez this time around, allowing the Aprilia to get away? Did we have a new fastest man 24 hours on? And what role would tyre wear play in a long race for which all the contenders chose the same compounds (medium rear and hard front)?
Per the script, the trio quickly began to leave the rest of the field behind, with Bezzecchi getting the hammer down right away. Marquez slipped past Acosta at the start of the second lap. With no immediate response from the KTM, all three were able to get into an early rhythm.
There was, at first glance, little to choose between them as they got into their groove. Across laps two and three, each of them set their quickest lap of the race – and 0.033s covered the lot. By this measure, the man in third, Acosta, was quickest. The man in the lead, Bezzecchi, was slowest.
Given that they would remain in this order until the end of the race, disappointing those who hoped for a repeat of Saturday’s place-swapping thriller, it was a neat illustration that one’s ultimate potential over a lap is but a single piece of the puzzle in a grand prix.
Bezzecchi was only half a second up the road at the start of lap four, but already Marquez and Acosta were thinking they might not have the tyre life left to reel him in. To put it another way, Bezzecchi had enough of a speed advantage to establish that cushion up front without ragging his rubber. And when his challengers’ times really began to drop from around lap eight, he was able to break the back of the race by going faster in the same phase.
It wasn’t just some dull set-up tweak that got him this winning mix of speed and tyre care, reported the 26-year-old after a comfortable 2.583s victory. Lest we forget, riders can also up their game overnight.
“Last night, I understood that I could make a step in terms of pace, seeing the data, seeing my mistakes in the riding,” said Bezzecchi. “So we worked until late in the night to try to solve everything. And this morning, when I started the warm-up, I was feeling super good.
“I found something better in braking. But I was also able to have a bit more flow, which in this track is super important. You know, with this [hilly] track, it’s important to try to get a smooth bike and smooth riding.
“Yesterday, with the soft rear [in the sprint], I was maybe a bit too aggressive. The bike was moving and shaking a bit too much. We tried to work to find some stability, but [the biggest step was] with the riding. I had to try to avoid quick movements on the bike and try to be more calm.”
Marquez’s front tyre ended the race in quite a state, which almost allowed Acosta to have a crack at him at the death. After hanging on to second, Marquez offered an interesting perspective for those who had been captivated by his speed in the last sector: it had come at a cost.
“From the first moment of the weekend, my feeling on the front in the last sector was not the best,” revealed Marquez. “So for that reason, I demanded too much of the front tyre. I had a lot of graining because I needed to force the bike too much to have the speed at that point.
“Bez and Aprilia were better than us. Starting from pole would not have changed anything. They had better pace than us, they had better tyre management than us, and that’s it.”
Marquez and Bezzecchi have won two of the final three 2025 grands prix. It would be another neat bit of narrative if Acosta nabbed the last one, next weekend at Valencia
Despite falling short again, Acosta kept up the brave face he has perfected of late. After all, it was another day on which his tyres looked comparatively good at the end – unthinkable a few races ago. If anything, old habits may have made Acosta too conservative early on.
“It’s strange,” he mused. “Normally, we always start the race already with less grip than our competitors, and this is quite frustrating because you cannot put a good pace from the beginning. [Here] we see that at the end of the race I was quite competitive, maybe at the level of Marco, but then already they were too far ahead. I recovered a good gap to Alex. We saw that I’m able to maintain the tyres now, more or less. We have to be happy because at the beginning of the season, we were struggling a lot compared now. We just have to keep going. Like I said, we are closer and closer.”
Let’s consider our leading trio from Portimao one last time, then. Marquez and Bezzecchi have won two of the final three 2025 grands prix. It would be another neat bit of narrative if Acosta nabbed the last one, next weekend at Valencia – the nearest MotoGP venue to his home in Murcia. But Marquez and Bezzecchi will no doubt have other ideas as the circus heads to its final stop.
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