Bezzecchi and Fernandez dominate Sprint, Miller finishes fourth at home

Aprilia riders Marco Bezzecchi and Raul Fernandez scored a dominant MotoGP™ Sprint race 1-2 at the Liqui Moly Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix 2025 at Phillip Island on Saturday afternoon.

Bezzecchi followed Fernandez for the opening nine laps before finding a way past the Trackhouse machine, stopping the Spaniard from taking his maiden MotoGP™ win after knifing his way to the lead from the second row of the grid to fight off the multi-winged factory RS-GP of Bezzecchi. The Italian had hit a Victorian seagull on the formation lap and a part of the bird was wedged in the black bike’s fairing as the race went on.

By the end of the 13 laps Bezzecchi had built a lead of 3.149s after an utterly dominant performance.

“It was pretty hard,” Bezzecchi said, who led home the first Ducati-free Sprint podium of the season.

“At the beginning I hit a big bird, unfortunate for me and unfortunately for him! I was worried that something was broken on the bike, Raul was very fast and I could not catch him. When I catch him I made a mistake and I had to go through it all again!”

After Aprilia’s first Sprint 1-2 result Fernandez was a happy man.

“I was very relaxed on the bike, I tried to not make a mistake,” Fernandez said, who scored his maiden Sprint podium two weeks ago in Indonesia.

“When I saw I could not follow Marco I just tried to survive, it is so important to survive the rear tyre.”

There was a great battle for third, which was initially held by Jack Miller. The Australian made a great start from the front row and was easily Yamaha’s best hope of a podium result, especially when he found a way past the Ducati of Alex Marquez. But the Yamaha was a sitting duck on the straight and, just as Marquez’s Ducati was sizing him up, so was Pedro Acosta’s KTM, which swooped past the pair of them and into third.

“This was not our weekend, [it was] looking like after yesterday,” Acosta said. “The race was just fine though, we are managing quite well the second half of the season. And Dani [Pedrosa] and Pol [Espargaro] we have the greatest test team in the world!”

Try as he might Miller could not find a way past the orange rocketship, despite a lunge inside at the final corner, but fourth was a great finish for the Townsville rider. In particular, a fired-up Fabio Di Giannantonio was nearly alongside Miller at the flag, the VR46 Ducati falling just 0.04s behind the Pramac Yamaha at the chequered flag – after starting from 10th on the grid.

Marquez was sixth ahead of Fabio Quartararo, who did not get anything even close to a good start from pole position. Luca Marini rode a good race on the works Honda, who shook himself free of the battle for the final points that at one stage included his teammate Joan Mir.

Francesco Bagnaia wrote another chapter in his book of shockers in 2025. He went backwards at the start and found himself in 16th after two laps, and that became 19th at the flag, 32 seconds behind the winner in 13 laps. The only bike that finished behind him was his teammate for the weekend, Ducati test rider Michele Pirro.

As a result Bezzecchi is just eight points behind Bagnaia as the two VR46 graduates battle for third place in the MotoGP™ World Championship.