Boris gives us his take on the Hungarian GP – Balaton Park

MotoGP 2025

Round 14 – Balaton Park MotoGP Race Report

The prevailing view of the Balaton Park circuit was that it was a “Mickey Mouse” circuit. Like, Mickey is a caricature of a mouse, and the track was a caricature of a track.

I’d heard this from people I know in the paddock, then I heard it again on the world feed from one of the team bosses, who let it slip during an interview.

The track, which is relatively new, having only opened in 2023, heralded MotoGP’s return to Hungary after 33 years. It had few fans in the paddock, with riders complaining there were too few passing points, and too many choke points at the four chicanes, where if you out-braked yourself, you ended up in the “shortcut”, and if it was during the race, you also ended up doing a Long Lap Penalty or dropping a place. And it was also too narrow.

Did this impact the field? Yep. Did it impact Marc Marquez? Nope. He hammered them again. Saturday and Sunday, he yet again demolished the rest of the paddock with consummate ease.

Their frustration is evident. Pecco looks utterly lost. Pedro is a dark cloud of resentment. Bezz is the only one bouncing around the place with a grin on his face, but that’s got more to do with his new girlfriend than any chance of a championship. And Martin is still in recovery mode.

In the Sprint Race, Fabio Quartararo uncharacteristically lost all sense of proportion off the start and went desperately blasting towards the front, almost taking out the two VR46 riders and Marc Marquez. But he was the one that went down. And he was the one who copped a LLP penalty. Beast copped two LLPs for taking out Zarco a bit later, while Jack Miller and serial pest, Alex Marquez, were also penalised for being slow on the racing line during Practice. These were all to be served on Sunday, rather than Saturday.

Everyone is always super-keen to qualify well and get a good start, reasoning that if that can be done, Marquez can be challenged in some way. But they’re wrong. He can’t. Bezz led for some of the race on Sunday, but once Marc got past Morbidelli in second, in took him just two laps to get a two-second lead on Bezz and two more to turn that into an almost four-second gap. And regular viewers will know Marc does this race after race. If he doesn’t lead from go to whoa, he gets to the front when he feels it’s time and then disappears.

What can any of them do about that? Not a damn thing.

Pecco Bagnaia’s season is now well wedged near the S-bend of the toilet, and it doesn’t look like moving anytime soon. He struggled all weekend and started the race in 13^th. He finished in ninth, but he did that behind KTM’s test-monkey, Pol Espargaro, who was the only rider to have ridden a MotoGP bike at Balaton Park. That would have stung.

Both Honda and KTM had made some small progress over the weekend, and Luca Marini did quite well for HRC – fifth on Sunday and fourth on Saturday, while poor old Joan Mir added another DNF to his record-breaking tally in the main race.

Who did surprise a little was current world champion, Jorge Martin. His Sunday race was pretty good, and he relentlessly clawed his way to fifth. It’s great to see the champion getting quicker, but it remains to be seen if this is an upward trend, or just a strange anomaly at a strange track.

Both Pedro Acosta and Marco Bezzecchi rode the wheels off their bikes, but it simply made no difference to Marc Marquez. He just goes faster – and once he gets clear track in front of him, no-one can get anywhere near him. Bezz fought hard each time Marc passed him a few laps into the race, but everyone could see that once Marc worked it out and made the pass stick, all Bezz could do was stay in second.

The race began with electrical gremlins in Digi’s Ducati, as it sat proudly propped on the front row of the grid. He could either wheel it off the grid and cop a double LLP, or he could do the Warm Up Lap, pit, swap bikes, and start from the pit exit. He chose option B.

The Beast, also facing a double LLP for his earlier sins, crashed very early in the race, but remounted, then went and got his second bike, only so he could do the LLPs so they would not carry over to the next race.

Four other riders also went ploughing rocks, the aforementioned luckless Mir, Jack, Raul Fernandez, and Zarco.

The racing, what little there actually was of it, mainly consisted in Marc getting to the front after being trapped behind Morbidelli and Bezz, which only took a few laps. Then Franky went backwards, Bezz went fast enough to keep Pedro Acosta behind him in third, and the rest kinda just tried not to crash, or overcook themselves into one of the four chicanes.

Then they all went back to their respective pit garages to sulk in despair, while Marc sprayed prosecco over a small part of Hungary. His Factory Ducati team likely nudged the big box of 2025 World Champion T-shirts a little closer to the front of the truck. They’re going to be opening it very soon.

Catalonia is in two weeks. No prizes for guessing what’s going to happen there.

Balaton Park MotoGP Results

Balaton Park MotoGP Top Speeds

The average is from the best five speeds

MotoGP Championship Standings

Constructor Championship

2025 MotoGP Calendar

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