Marc Marquez defeated Pedro Acosta in a bizarre Czech Grand Prix sprint at Brno - and kept his win after being cleared in a quick post-race investigation.
The MotoGP championship leader deliberately gave up first place during the race in a play to stay within the tyre pressure requirements.
He retook the lead on the penultimate lap and took the chequered flag first ahead of Pedro Acosta, but was placed under post-race investigation - which suggested there was doubt on race control's side that he hit the required tyre pressure reading on the front tyre for the requisite three laps out of 10 at Brno.
? @marcmarquez93 hits the front
And look at @88jorgemartin, already up to 7th! ?#CzechGP ?? pic.twitter.com/qiRGeokuIF
Marquez took the lead from polesitter Pecco Bagnaia at Turn 3 after the start, and the pair were streaking away out front initially, seemingly on course to celebrate a conventional Ducati 1-2.
But Bagnaia was first to show all wasn't right in the works Ducati team, deliberately slowing down to drop deeper in the pack - first letting Acosta through and then being muscled down the order by Enea Bastianini amidst a season-best showing for the Tech3 KTM rider.
Then, Marquez too repeated the exact same trick, rolling out to let Acosta through.
The six-time champion followed closely behind Acosta for some laps, then lined up a penultimate-lap move through the change of direction at Turns 11-12.
Marquez sounded convinced post-race that he had done enough to avoid a penalty - "for that reason I'm smiling" - and it was soon confirmed no further action would be taken. Two other riders who were investigated over tyre pressures, Ai Ogura and Alex Rins, were also cleared.
Marquez already had to deliberately give up the lead to keep tyre pressures under control once earlier in 2025, during the season-opening Thailand Grand Prix.
The issue at Brno presumably arose due to the extremely limited data in terms of any extended stints in the dry this weekend, at a resurfaced, now-much-faster track that MotoGP hadn't raced at since it dropped off the calendar in 2020.
An 11th win from 12 sprint races this season means Marquez is now 95 points clear in the standings.
Bagnaia's race never recovered from having to drop back, so the final podium positions were fought out by Bastianini and Marco Bezzecchi - the former just fighting off the latter for third.
Bezzecchi had been ahead of Bastianini in the early going but dropped back when he went for a gap left by Fabio Quartararo going ever-so-slightly wide, which immediately disappeared as Yamaha rider rejoined the racing line.
CONTACT between Bezzecchi & Quartararo ?
And @Bestia23 takes advantage! ?#CzechGP ?? pic.twitter.com/K7OgKAzUHy
Quartararo finished fifth, while Trackhouse Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez went past Bagnaia on the final lap to claim sixth place, with Johann Zarco close behind them in seventh as Honda's sole points-scorer.
Jorge Martin was running in the points for much of his MotoGP race return after his long injury layoff, but his pace faded - perhaps unsurprisingly - and he was picked off by KTM tester Pol Espargaro on the third-to-last lap for ninth place, which pays a single point.
Martin was then also overtaken by KTM rider Brad Binder, but still came home in a respectable 11th.
Alex Marquez had his worst sprint of the season after dropping like a stone off the line, though still had a better Saturday afternoon than fellow Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio - who crashed out while running third-to-last.
Honda rider Joan Mir also went backwards from a solid grid position, then went wide at Turn 3, effectively writing off his sprint.
A very unfortunate one ?@Afernandez37 and @takanakagami30 are out ?#CzechGP ?? pic.twitter.com/xhaTod4mHJ
Exiting the race early on were testers Augusto Fernandez and Takaaki Nakagami, the latter clobbered into by the former in a nasty crash after a rear slide for Fernandez.
