Chaos at the start
The 2026 season did not start well for the reigning world runner-up Alex Marquez. The Spaniard from the Gresini team, after recording the seventh fastest time in qualifying, finished the Sprint 11th and outside the points zone. The #73’s race took a turn – for the worse – at the start. A contact in turn-2 between him and Fabio Di Giannantonio indeed ruined the Saturday for both. The 27-year-old Roman rider was very angry about his colleague’s maneuver, which however was not judged irregular by the race stewards.
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The reply to Diggia
Alex, however, speaking to the official MotoGP channel, defended himself against accusations of misconduct: “I had a very good start and then three of us arrived side-by-side under braking with Diggia after the straight: he tried to defend his position from the outside and closed the line on me. I had Raul Fernandez on the inside and so I couldn’t do anything – Marquez explained – I decided to release the brakes because otherwise I would have created an even worse situation“.
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In this way, the hopes of winning championship points for the Gresini team representative were already over: “There isn’t much else to say. I was good at recovering some positions and I had a better feeling on the bike. We understood some things that will be useful for tomorrow. I’m not happy with the result, but I’m happy with the feeling. We are making steps forward, tomorrow if we have a good start we could have a good race”, he concluded.
