Márquez’s ominous domination of MotoGP season opener

It can’t have been a very pleasant Sunday morning in the Valentino Rossi household. Not only did the nine-time world champion have to watch his prize VR46 rider Pecco Bagnaia get beaten twice by new factory Ducati team-mate Marc Márquez, he also had to watch him get beaten twice by Alex Márquez, riding for the independent Gresini Ducati team, which last year gave the elder Márquez a way out of his Honda hell.

Bagnaia has rarely looked as forlorn as he did in the post-race media conference – sat there deep in thought, while the world’s media directed most of their questions at the two riders sat beside him, who, after all, had just made history: never before had two brothers finished first and second in a premier-class grand prix.

“It’s like a dream,” said Alex, who nearly proved what his brother has always been saying – he’s the fastest Márquez. “We need to work to keep this dream for longer, so we will do our maximum. We will try to enjoy as we do normally in our training plan and all that. With all the work, it’s super-nice to see that the results are there. Super-nice. No words to describe how you feel when you are on a podium with your brother.”

Of course, Bagnaia is far from beaten. The 2025 season is only one weekend old and Italy’s most recent MotoGP king had a mostly rubbish three days at Buriram. He had struggles with front-tyre choice and, ironically, was dumped out of Q2 on Friday afternoon by dangerously dawdling fellow VR46 rider Franky Morbidelli.

Nevertheless he wasn’t happy with the first GP of his seventh season in MotoGP. “I’m not here to finish third,” he said.

In Saturday’s sprint race Bagnaia chose the hard-compound front, with its made-for-Buriram stiff casing, for better braking stability. But the tyre didn’t have good edge grip for turning, so he destroyed the tyre trying to force the bike to turn. He switched to the soft for Sunday — used by both Márquez brothers in both races — but hadn’t done enough laps with it to get the set-up right.

“I have to improve and learn,” he added.

No doubt Bagnaia will spend much of the next two weeks poring over Marc’s and Alex’s data, searching for clues that will make him faster at the next two races at Termas de Rio Hondo and COTA, both Marc Márquez strongholds.

The 2022 and 2023 champ will be back but will he learn and improve enough to better his new team-mate, who was basically in cruise mode all weekend?

“Marc was playing with us,” said Bagnaia, with a weak grin.

Even more ominous for the rest of the grid was this…

“The main thing is I’m riding comfortable,” said Márquez, who hadn’t won a season-opening GP since 2014.

This was Márquez’s third victory at Buriram. When he won the 2018 and 2019 races with Honda he crashed three times in practice and qualifying, always treading past the limit to find race-winning performance. His two tumbles during the 2019 Thai GP, where he wrapped up his last title, included a terrifying highside, which briefly put him in hospital

“With the Honda you had to push much more, which meant more risk,” he told me recently.

So far this year the eight-time world champion has done eight days of riding, three at Sepang and five at Buriram. And he’s crashed just once, a minor front-ender at Sepang. How many times would he have bitten the asphalt if he was still riding a Honda?

Márquez knows he is finally out of the hellhole

Aboard the Ducati he simply doesn’t have to take the risks he used to take to make the lap time with the RC213V.

He’s riding smoother than ever – because that’s how the Ducati likes to be ridden – and seems more in control than ever.

And not only in control on the racetrack. MotoGP garages work in a simple way – engineers always lean towards their fastest rider, for obvious reasons. Already that’s happening inside the Ducati garage, so Márquez is taking control there as well. Of course, things may change, but if they don’t, Bagnaia will no longer enjoy the number-one status he’s enjoyed since he moved to the factory team in 2021. Another reason for those forlorn looks.

Márquez’s emotions after Sunday’s race were a rollercoaster. He veered from huge grins to wobbly bottom lip and back again, time and time again. He knows that – barring disasters – he is finally out of the hellhole into which he fell into almost five years ago: multiple surgeries, multiple moments when he wondered if it was all over. All those memories surged through him every time his bottom lip quivered.

Now he knows that he once again has the chance to prove that he is, arguably, the greatest motorcycle racer of all time.

His only problem at Buriram was MotoGP’s tiresome tyre-pressure rule. All MotoGP bikes have their own alarm systems that tell riders when they’re in danger of being under pressure for more than half the race, which gets them an automatic 16-second penalty (which would’ve pushed Márquez down to eighth).

His alarm went off after the first few laps, a big surprise for everyone. Getting your front tyre pressure just right – not so low that you get a penalty and not so high that the tyre swells, changes profile and loses you grip – is a guesstimating game. I can’t remember the factory Ducati team making this mistake in the past, but there’s always a first time, so it was up to Márquez to compensate and get himself out of trouble

“The first two laps I felt smooth and fast, I was riding in a very good way,” he said. “Then I saw that the tyre pressure wasn’t in the correct range, so I started to brake harder [to put more heat and therefore pressure into the front tyre] for two laps.”

But that wasn’t enough, so on lap seven of 26 he eased off to let his brother past, so the Gresini Ducati would heat his front tyre and get him out of penalty danger.

Looks of panic in the factory Ducati garage! The older Márquez followed the younger Márquez for the next 16 laps, just metres behind the Gresini Desmosedici’s tyre. Would he be able to get past, because heating his front tyre was both good and bad? No penalty maybe, but less grip certainly.

Bagnaia was chasing hard, sometimes getting within half a second of the brothers, but whenever he did so the heat from their bikes cost him front grip, so he couldn’t get any closer. Marc must’ve been in the same situation.

The 37C heat wasn’t only a problem for front tyres, it was also a problem for the riders, who were struggling to breathe the 50C air behind their windscreens, aboard bikes that were literally burning hot, over 100C. Most riders in all three classes showed off burned calves, burned forearms, blistered hands after Sunday’s races, while some struggled with blurred vision and others struggled to brake properly because their front brake levers were burning their fingers.

The first time MotoGP raced in Southeast Asia – the 1991 Malaysian GP at Shah Alam – the main race was shortened by five laps. This would’ve been a good idea at Buriram.