At the start of practice on the new track in Hungary, two Aprilia riders suffered major engine failures – Marc Marquez cruised to a clear fastest time
New MotoGP track, familiar frontrunner. Marc Marquez dominated the first practice session on the new Balaton Park Circuit on his return to Hungary. The Ducati rider was around three tenths of a second ahead of Pol Espargaro in the first session.
The KTM rider, who is replacing Maverick Vinales in the Tech 3 team, set the second-fastest time at the end, albeit on new tires. Aprilia made headlines with two engine failures.
The first 45 minutes were primarily about getting to know the new four-kilometer race track with ten left and six right turns and checking basic things like the gear ratio for the slow track.
The morning was cloudy, cool, and windy. Everyone started the practice session with soft tires at the front and medium tires at the rear. Of course, lap times improved continuously as the riders got to know the limits of the track better and better.
In the first run, Jorge Martin’s Aprilia suffered a major engine failure on the start-finish straight after six laps. He pulled to the left, coasted to a stop at the end of the straight and parked his RS-GP in the gravel trap. The smell of engine failure was clearly noticeable.
A few minutes later, the next Aprilia was smoking! This time, Raul Fernandez suffered a major engine failure after the short straight towards turn 5. Training was then interrupted to clean up an oil spill from Fernandez’s bike.
We’ve got a Red Flag HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/BVnVd6814J
— MotoGP™ (@MotoGP) August 22, 2025
In an initial reaction, Aprilia did not know the reasons for the engine failures. However, engines with high mileage had been installed for the first practice session. Martin’s motorcycle was the same bike he crashed in the Austrian Grand Prix.
Martin and Fernandez continued the practice session after the interruption with their second bikes. Among the top riders, only Marc Marquez switched to a new soft front tire for the second run. He had already used this tactic in Spielberg on Friday.
Marc Marquez works with familiar tactics
After a few minutes, the yellow flags came out again. This time, Franco Morbidelli crashed his VR46 Ducati in Turn 1. And Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha) ran off into the gravel trap in Turn 1.
The longer the practice session went on, the more Marc Marquez dominated the action. On his 14th lap, he clocked a time of 1:38.239 minutes and was half a second faster than the competition at that point.
On his next lap, Marc Marquez clocked a time of 1:38.122 minutes and increased his lead to over six tenths of a second. Once again, the same pattern was evident: after six or seven laps with a new front tire, the season’s dominant rider really turned up the heat.
Quickest by over half a second, taming the Ducati @marcmarquez93 has everything under control ✅HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/OlLi5D32N0
— MotoGP™ (@MotoGP) August 22, 2025
With fifteen minutes to go before the end of practice, Morbidelli crashed for the second time. This time, the Italian went down in turn 15. Before the final ten minutes, the riders made a second pit stop to give feedback to the engineers.
Brembo recommends a front brake disc with a diameter of 340 millimeters for Balaton. However, Francesco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio tried out the larger 355 disc on their Ducatis. Marc Marquez decided not to take part in this experiment with either of his GP25 bikes.
In the final run, Marc Marquez improved the best time to 1:37.956 minutes. With new tires, Pol Espargaro moved up to second place. He was already familiar with the track on the MotoGP bike, as the test riders had spent a day here a few weeks ago.
The assembled competition is behind
Acosta stayed on used tires and was third, around six tenths of a second behind. Luca Marini rode with a new Honda chassis and finished fourth in the leading group. Alex Marquez (Gresini-Ducati) completed the top five (see results).
The best Aprilia rider was Marco Bezzecchi, who was just under eight tenths of a second behind Marc Marquez. Positions seven to ten went to Morbidelli, Enea Bastianini (Tech3-KTM), Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini-Ducati) and Martin.
Yamaha’s spearhead Fabio Quartararo finished eleventh, one second behind. Miller crashed at the end of the session in turn 12.
Bagnaia ultimately finished 15th, 1.4 seconds behind his Ducati teammate. Di Giannantonio was twelfth, also 1.1 seconds behind.
While three KTM riders made it into the top 10, Brad Binder was at the back of the field, 2.2 seconds behind.
The one-hour afternoon practice session begins at 3:00 p.m., when the important Q2 spots will be decided.