MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez controlled the Italian Grand Prix sprint race despite a major start mishap.
Rain in the area threatened to break up the scorching Mugello heat but never quite came - but there was another twist to Marquez's race from pole.
Just seconds away from lights out, he was seen fidgeting with his start device - and he was dreadful slow off the line, dropping to sixth at best coming into the San Donato braking zone.
Just milliseconds before the start 👀
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 21, 2025
This is what happened to @marcmarquez93 👇#ItalianGP 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/iUd0x46N1S
But Maverick Vinales trying to move past Fabio Quartararo up ahead created a bit of chaos, and Marquez was quickly up to fourth, then picking off Quartararo immediately and setting off after the two leaders - his team-mate Pecco Bagnaia and his team-mate Alex Marquez.
The trio went effectively three-wide on the main straight at the start of the next lap, with the younger Marquez leading and Bagnaia shuffled down to third in the melee - and quickly dropping back from the pair.
Marc then worked his way past Alex under braking into San Donato on the fourth lap, and was never under real pressure to lose the lead from there on.
The Marquezes took the flag 1.4s apart, maintaining their remarkable streak of finishing 1-2 in some order in every single sprint so far this year. They are now 35 points apart in the standings.
Bagnaia - who is 63 points back from the younger Marquez - briefly threatened a counter-attack on second place, but eventually picked up a track limits warning and seemed to focus on protecting third place from Vinales behind him.
The Tech3 KTM rider's podium bid was hindered by being stuck behind Quartararo in the early laps, before he finally outdragged the Yamaha on the main straight at the start of the fifth lap.
Quartararo's promising race really unravelled from there, perhaps as a combination of his shoulder injury from Friday practice and Yamaha's lack of straightline performance.
He was overtaken by the VR46 pair of Fabio Di Giannantonio and Franco Morbidelli, then the Aprilias of Marco Bezzecchi and Raul Fernandez (with Bezzecchi also picking off Morbidelli).
Finally, a last-lap move from Fermin Aldeguer, who had worked his way through from 16th in the early going, denied Quartararo - and thus Yamaha - any points from the race.
Honda likewise came up empty, never looking like a points threat, though its test rider Taka Nakagami - standing in for the injured Luca Marini - was impressive in 15th.
There were three retirements from two incidents. First, at Turn 1, Brad Binder went down from contact with Di Giannantonio (who himself had Bezzecchi on his inside) and cleaned out LCR Honda's Johann Zarco on the outside, the whole situation deemed a racing incident.
Binder and team-mate Pedro Acosta were the only two riders rolling the dice on the hard front here (as opposed to the consensus choice of the medium front), and Acosta soon joined the DNF list, going wide and tucking the front at the final corner on the opening lap while in pursuit of Vinales.
