Can the forgotten MotoGP champion end his five-year victory wait in Malaysia?

For a championship race that had seemed like a formality since the summer, the ending oddly foreshadowed something of a reset for the 2025 MotoGP season. Marc Márquez’s unfortunate absence due to injury opened the door for a new winner to step in.

Gresini’s Fermin Aldeguer took advantage of the unusual conditions at the Indonesian Grand Prix to secure his first win as a rookie. Two weeks later, Raul Fernandes scored his first Grand Prix win in Australia with a stunning win at Trackhouse Aprilia.

This outstanding result by two young campaigners was made possible by a combination of circumstances. For Aldeguer, the loss of Marco Bezzecchi and Marquez at the Indonesian Grand Prix and a stiffer rear tire paved the way. For Fernandes, Bezzecchi’s two long-lap penalties and the poor qualifying speed of VR46 Ducati’s Fabio Di Giannantonio gave Fernandes his chance.

And after Friday’s Malaysian Grand Prix, I don’t think life will return to normal anytime soon. Bezzecchi and Aprilia have struggled overall in practice, and currently no RS-GP is in Q2. Only one Ducati finished in the top six, but Alex Marquez, who was the strongest at the Sepang test, crashed twice on Friday.

KTM’s Pedro Acosta led the way, a sight that is now all too familiar, but he is yet to prove that he has everything under his belt to use his speed to take his long-awaited first Grand Prix victory.

The stars at Sepang on Friday were scattered across Yamaha and Honda, with five Japanese bikes directly within Q2. LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco finished second, returning to form after coming off HRC’s recent updates. Jack Miller, leading Yamaha, finished third overall.

Reading through long runs is difficult at the best of times, but it’s even more difficult this weekend given the scattered rain that affected both sessions.

Nevertheless, amidst the tight numbers, one manages to stand out, hinting at the possibility of a major comeback for the often overlooked world champion, whose wait for a second premier class win is now five years.

Honda is seriously aiming for a second MotoGP victory in 2025

Given the progress Honda has made throughout the 2025 season, it’s hard to imagine the brand not being a regular contender for the podium in 2026. There have been visible results since the off, and those gains have only grown as further updates have been brought to the RC213V.

Zarco’s victory at the French Grand Prix was noteworthy, but Honda’s third place at the dry Japanese Grand Prix a few weeks ago was perhaps more important.

This highlighted several key points about the 2025 Honda. One is that the engine is clearly running better than it has in recent years. And two, the bike doesn’t have the traction issues it used to have. This makes the bike more agile and even easier to use.

If there’s one place that tests all these factors well, it’s Sepang. Joan Mir recorded a speed of 336.4 km/h on Friday’s speed chart, matching the fastest bike in MotoGP history, the KTM RC16. Mir maintained his recent good lap speed and finished in 4th place overall.

But it was racing that really intrigued him. In the six-lap representative run on the soft rear, the 2020 world champion averaged 1 minute 59.107 seconds. This is much faster than anyone else in the top 10 sample, so take it with a grain of salt.

But there are enough signs to suggest that Honda is very much in the game. Zarco’s average pace was close to that of Pedro Acosta and Alex Marquez, as well as Luca Marini.

From Mir’s perspective, he said he felt fast from the opening lap. And when it came time to start the time attack, Honda didn’t let up, as they have often done this season. That’s not surprising at all. Honda recently carried out considerable testing at Sepang with Aleix Espargaro and provided HRC with a large amount of relevant data.

Two hurdles await Honda and Mir. First up is the qualifying rounds. That Honda has one-lap speed, but Mir has never finished higher than 12th place since finishing second in Japan. In Australia, teammate Marini felt that qualifying was the area where he was most disappointed. Maintaining the fast time attack that Honda showed on Friday will be the next important step.

Next is tire wear. Mr Mill did not suggest that there was no suffering on Friday’s “innocuous day”. But we don’t know what kind of tire wear to expect.

“There are still some question marks with the tires and whether the softs will make it to the end of the race and which one is better,” he explained. “We need to work a little bit more on race pace, but the important thing is that if everyone pushes and we push, we will be in front.”

“We’re not really struggling at any one point in particular. We just need to understand if we can go through the race without losing too much of the rear tire and the front tire. We don’t know how the bike is going to react on laps 10, 12, 15, so it’s important to understand that tomorrow.”

Mill is not ahead of the curve. And rightly so. His 2020 world title and last and only MotoGP race win came five years ago, and it’s been a huge struggle since then.

But there is real hope that something big will come to Mir on Sunday.

Tire wear uncertainty remains for KTM

Pedro Acosta’s recent form could be classified as fast but rough. Despite his speed, he still makes too many mistakes to deny him time or good results in practice. It was the same on Friday at Sepang, where he lost time with two crashes in FP1 and practice, finishing the day fastest.

His crash was a low-speed front-end rollout at Turn 9 during practice, just minutes into the session. Then, with about 30 minutes left in the session, the session was affected by light rain, costing him dry track time.

KTM is still looking for a solution to the tire wear problem, so they can’t afford to lose valuable track time right now. These effects affected Australia’s Acosta, who fell from early contention for the win to fifth place.

The same problem hit him at Mandalika, but he was able to defend his position better on a track where overtaking is not the easiest. But it’s something that has been plaguing KTM all year, and only now is it really starting to hurt.

Acosta was one of the best in terms of race pace in factory KTM practice and is clearly the only hope for a decent result at this stage. Tech 3’s replacement Pol Espargaro was impressive in 8th place and went straight into Q2, but his race pace wasn’t even close to Acosta’s. Next best was KTM with Brad Binder in 17th place.

Acosta does a good job of hiding his frustration at recently having to watch two young riders take their first wins. If KTM can find something to stop the bike from digging into the rubber, Acosta will be in a great position to have a serious shot at winning.

Pre-round favorites face contrasting fates on Friday

One name that was considered to be on the rise in Malaysia from the beginning was Gresini’s Alex Marquez. He was fast enough in the February test that he probably would have walked had the Grand Prix been held a few days later at Sepang.

It is not unrealistic to suggest that the 29-year-old, Ducati’s sprint winner at Sepang in 2023, is the Italian manufacturer’s only realistic hope of winning the Malaysian Grand Prix at the moment.

Ducati suffered a crushing defeat at Sepang on Friday. Pecco Bagnaia finished 12th and was eliminated in Q2, but he felt he had more to offer, even if his feeling in Australia hadn’t improved as much as he had hoped.

VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio finished 6th, the best of any Ducati in GP25, followed by teammate Franco Morbidelli, while Fermin Aldeguer missed out on Q2 in 13th place.

Di Giannantonio’s long run pace seemed stable enough, but Alex Marquez was faster than anyone in the sample except Joan Mir. As already mentioned, it is highly unlikely that the pace between Mir and the rest of the players will be anywhere near the genuine 0.350 seconds. So, even if there is still work to be done, Marquez’s form is worth keeping an eye on.

Two crashes left him with neck pain, and by the end of practice he was in 9th place, just trying to advance to Q2. Marquez admitted this made some adjustments to his work on afternoon runs.

The biggest surprise of the day was Aprilia, which didn’t have a single car in the top 10. Sepang hasn’t been the kindest circuit for Aprilia in recent years, but Marco Bezzecchi was expected to do better than 15th at the end of practice.

He admitted that the team “couldn’t find a step” to be competitive in the time attack stage at RS-GP. But it also extended to race pace, with Bezzecchi averaging 1:59.811 on the soft rear on Friday afternoon.

That’s a big deficit to fill on Saturday, given the limited mileage he can compete in. But this is also not the first time he has been able to turn his weekend around by winning from Q1. So Aprilia at least has it in its back pocket.

But if Aprilia wants to maintain the momentum that everyone sees as a title threat in 2026, a major change of direction will be necessary…