Alex Márquez: I saw Marc crash and said 'Today is your day’

“So I went to Gresini and I said, ‘I want your bike and I don’t care about anything else’. I just want your bike to see what my potential is. Give me one year and we’ll see. Honestly speaking, from my first laps on the Ducati at Valencia [2022 post-season tests] I could see the potential was there and it was a matter of time for me to come back.”

Exactly one year later his big brother made the same journey, from an RC213V to a year-old Gresini Desmosedici, and the story was exactly the same.

“At that moment I understood that I’d made the correct decision and sooner or later a victory would arrive,” Marc told me last year.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, little brother achieved his lifelong dream, adding a MotoGP victory to his 2014 Moto3 title and his 2019 Moto2 crown.

“Today’s win is on the same level as winning those titles,” he added.

Márquez the younger rode a perfect race at Jerez, after a scary first-lap moment which nearly had him take out Marc and factory Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia at Turn 6.

Two laps later he had Marc fall right in front of him. That was the moment Alex knew he could do it, because the Spaniard knew from practice that he had a better pace than Fabio Quartararo ahead of him and Pecco Bagnaia behind him.

“I knew the opportunity today was huge, so I was trying to be really focused, and when I saw Marc crash, I said, ‘OK, today is your day’. I knew with Marc on track I had a chance of victory and I knew without him I was the strongest one. I just kept focusing, kept going and when I overtook Fabio I just tried to make my pace and not do any crazy things.”

Alex was inch-perfect after he took the lead shortly before half-distance. He stretched his advantage over Quartararo’s Yamaha to almost three seconds before he eased off, waving to the record crowd on his final lap and yet still managing to establish a new race record.

It was a shame that the gloriously noisy crowd – the event was a sell-out because so many fans had come to watch the Márquez show – didn’t get treated to some proper sibling rivalry. Some fans think that Alex will always give way to Marc. But many paddock insiders believe the opposite – that Marc would give way to Alex, at least for his first win. Sadly, we didn’t get to find out, because it would’ve been something else to see them attacking the final hairpin for the last time, side by side.

Alex’s only worry in those final laps – with the crowd going mental – was losing focus and making a mistake, because he was hardly cruising, with Quartararo fighting like hell to keep Bagnaia at bay.

“Seven laps to the end I was losing a bit of concentration,” Alex added. “I was thinking about so many things, about the team, about how to celebrate, so I said to myself, ‘Come on! It’s time to go!’ The last lap was super-nice.”

Like all Spanish Jerez winners, Alex saved his biggest celebrations for the track’s stadium section around Turns 9 and 10 and said he considered spending the night there with the fans. You couldn’t hope to meet a more humble, chilled-out and friendly MotoGP winner.

The 29-year-old’s first premier-class victory was doubly historic. Alex and Marc are GP racing’s first premier-class sibling winners. Of course, they had already both won GPs in the lower classes, like Can and Deniz Öncü, Aleix and Pol Espargaro, Brad and Darryn Binder, Nobuatsu and Haruchika, Dominique and Christian Sarron. (And Valentino Rossi and Luca Marini, in case you feel like including half-brothers.)

This was also Ducati’s 22nd consecutive grand prix victory, which matches Honda’s 22 in a row, with the NSR500 in 1997 and 1998.

So there were plenty of excuses for a big Ducati party on Sunday night. But in fact not. Because the factory team is struggling with its 2025 GP24.4, GP24.9 or GP24 whatever you want to call it.

During pre-season testing Márquez senior and Bagnaia both rejected the 2025 engine and 2025 chassis, so they are basically racing GP24s with a few detail upgrades – hardware and software.

But might it be true that the factory bikes are worse than the GP24?

That’s certainly what Bagnaia suggested on Sunday evening. The man who won the 2022, 2023 and 2024 Jerez races couldn’t ride his latest bike the way he rode his GP24 there last year. And the data proved it.

Jerez is one of the worst tracks for overheating Michelin’s front tyre when you’re chasing other riders. This is why the first couple of laps were so frantic, with Alex’s wild Turn 6 move and Marc and Bagnaia swapping places four times in three corners, before colliding as they raced towards Turn 11. This was the factory team-mate’s first proper punch-up and Bagnaia was the winner!

“Everyone was trying to be in front because we all knew it was important to have fresh air for the front tyre, that was the key to the race,” said Alex.

The man who started out front was Quartararo, who used the clear track and fresh air to stay there for almost 11 laps. The 2021 MotoGP king, who had scored Yamaha’s first pole position since Germany 2022, was riding like a superhero to stay ahead of Bagnaia, his YZR-M1 making all kinds of shapes as he forced it to work beyond its design limits.

That made life difficult for Bagnaia and then impossible, because the heatwave from Quartararo’s M1 cooked his front tyre.

“The problem this season is always the same,” Bagnaia said. “When you are behind someone you feel the front tyre locking everywhere. This was the first time Marc wasn’t leading from the start and was behind someone with a similar pace and he lost the front, because every time you are in that situation you lose the front when you start to release the brake. Today I was losing the front in Turns 4, 5, 8, 11 and 12 [all fast corners where you don’t have a lot of load on the front, the problem exacerbated by the super-grippy rear slick pushing the front.]

“We don’t know why and we are trying to understand. Marc is very good at riding anything, but I cannot do that – I need to have a good feeling with the front. Last year I never had this feeling and I was doing things on fast corners that this year I cannot do, so we need to understand and maybe change the balance of the new bike.”

Surely the answer, in the short-term at least, is to revert to a GP24, just like Pedro Acosta has gone back to his 2024 KTM?

“I think the 2025 bike has more potential, because it has more acceleration and more top speed and straight braking is very good,” added Bagnaia. “I don’t know why because the chassis is the same, so in theory the balance is the same, or very similar, to last year’s bike.

“Looking at the data, it’s quite clear. If you overlay Alex’s lap times with my lap times from 2024 they are very similar. And if you put my 2025 data with my 2024 data it’s not the same.”

Marc was also confused. “I wasn’t attacking when I crashed, I was cruising, like in the first races, because I know the second part of the race is my strong part. It’s true that I was behind two riders for the first time in the weekend, so maybe the [front] tyre… the bike, changed a bit. I didn’t think about that and for that reason I made the mistake. The important thing is that the speed is there but we need to avoid mistakes.”

If the cause of Marc’s crash was his front tyre overheating, then going over pressure, changing profile and losing grip, then both him and the team need to have a good word with themselves.

They all know very well that this has been a big issue for years, especially at Jerez. So Marc and all of his team should have been aware: if you are close to one or two riders, expect to lose front grip, so watch out, take care and be ready. Instead Marc seemed to be a bit erratic at that stage, perhaps flustered by Bagnaia’s onslaught and worried that he was in the hot air of the group, without thinking about the consequences.

This was Marc’s second unforced crash of the year – a potential 50 points lost. And yet he wasn’t entirely heart-broken, because he’s still second in the championship, only one point behind Alex, and most important of all, his brother got his first MotoGP win.

“It’s the only reason I have small smile, but a smile. I’m super-happy for him, especially because he’s worked super-hard to win a MotoGP race, which was one of the targets of his career. He won the race, he’s leading the championship again and he’s riding in an amazing way. I’m so proud of my brother.”

If both Ducati riders were confused by their weekend at Jerez, how about Quartararo and Yamaha, who scored their first podium since late 2023?

“The difference is that the handling of the bike” Fabio Quartararo

Quartararo was fast from Friday, when he said the team needed to understand why he was fast! Finally he worked it out.

“The difference is that the handling of the bike is much better and we have changed the engine spec at least five times, so the engine feels better and faster,” he explained. “Also, we have gained a bit of grip compared to last year and by not touching the settings every single session I’ve been able to find the limit of the current bike, which helps me push the limits.”

Quartararo also led Saturday’s sprint, but only briefly, because he fell as Márquez swept past. He said the crash didn’t bother him – he didn’t care, all he cared about was that he had for the first time in years been able to race around a track with no one in front of him.

Will he be able to repeat the result at his home race at Le Mans in two weekends’ time? It will be tricky, because the circuit features two long straights preceded by slow corners, the kind of place where Ducati horsepower rules.

For Marc Márquez that will be a crucial weekend: will two crashes from three GPs freak him out and take away a bit of his speed? Or will he come out stronger? Time will tell.

Moto3’s ‘dirty tricks’

And now to Moto3… A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about subterfuge in MotoGP, about how riders and teams use all the dark and dirty tricks they can to find an advantage.

This probably happens more in Moto3 than anywhere else, just because the class is so tight. Therefore if it’s pretty much impossible to make the difference with your machine or your riding, you need to think outside the box. And outside the rules book.

During recent race weekends, MotoGP’s new chief steward Simon Crafar spotted something fishy going on in Moto3 qualifying and pre-qualifying. The fastest riders have developed a cunning plan: they do their time attacks early in sessions, to secure their places at the front of the grid, then they ride around slightly off the pace, while making sure they look like they’re trying, thereby obstructing rivals and preventing them from challenging their own lap times.

Crafar held a riders/teams meeting on the eve of the Spanish GP and riders judged to be engaging in their dubious tactic are being sanctioned. He will be watching the kids very carefully at Le Mans too.