Márquez: ‘The championship changes in a millisecond’

MotoGP

Marc Márquez seemed to have hoodwinked them all before Sunday’s COTA Grand Prix got underway, then he threw it all away and Pecco Bagnaia swept to his first win of 2025

Marc Marquez on the grid at the 2025 MotoGP US Grand Prix

You don’t win (or lose) world championships just by being fast on the racetrack. Marquez on the COTA grid with crew chief Marco Rigamonti (right)

Ducati Corse

Mat Oxley

MotoGP has been total war pretty much forever: knocking off your rivals, sleeping with their girlfriends, insulting them in media conferences and now dedicating your life to memorising all 374 pages and 110,000 words of the MotoGP bible, The FIM Grand Prix World Championship Regulations. Recommended by insomniacs everywhere.

Marc Márquez has committed the rulebook, or most of it, to memory because it’s a weapon. If you know every sentence — and more importantly the gaps between them — you’ll be able to do things others never even thought about.

Ducati’s chief engineer Gigi Dall’Igna reads MotoGP’s technical regulations the same way.

The Americas MotoGP race was preceded by rain. When riders rode out for their sighting lap — using rain tyres — they found the back straight (except it’s not straight, which is important in this instance) worryingly wet.

That’s why all but a very few opted to start the race on rain tyres. But during the pre-race activities, riders could see the asphalt was drying fast.

As the start approached, Márquez whispered his plan to crew chief Marco Rigamonti (while covering his mouth to stop TV crews reading his lips), then sprinted off the grid towards his team garage, running like he really meant it. Presumably he was off to collect his slick-shod second bike, with which he would start the warm-up lap from pitlane and start the race from the back of the grid.

But in fact he wasn’t after his other bike. The chutzpah of this move was bigger than that.

Márquez knows from the current rulebook (amended after the messy 2018 Argentine GP start, where he was penalised for a grid misdemeanour), that if enough riders leave the grid, the race will be delayed. This would allow him (and everyone else, but obviously that didn’t bother him) to change to slicks for the race.

Pecco Bagnaia celebrates 2025 MotoGP US GP win with Ducati team

Bagnaia celebrating his first win of 2025 with Ducati management – he’s a worker – he’s getting there step by step

Ducati Corse

This is where Márquez is at now – he knows he’s so deep in the heads of his rivals that he can pull a stunt like that and they’ll fall for it. That’s remarkable.

“I really know the rules and what to do – and how to be on the limit all the time,” said Márquez. “I saw that rain tyres weren’t the correct strategy and I predicted that when I left the grid, more than ten riders will follow me and then they’ll stop the race. And that’s what happened.”

In fact that wasn’t the exact reason the race was stopped: Márquez’s trick also fooled most team staff in pitlane, sending them fetching this, that and the other for the expected restart. So race director Mike Webb pulled the plug.

But team bosses of the riders who had bravely gambled to start on slicks were raging that the race was delayed – they’d rolled the dice and been ripped off. They had a point.

 

Most of the other riders just nodded and grinned when they were told of Márquez’s cunning plan. “He’s sneaky about that kind of thing,” said one.

The irony is that Marquez may only know 95% of the rules. He thought that when he swapped bikes before the warm-up lap he would have to start the race from the back row of the grid.

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“I was convinced about my strategy, to start last on the grid,” he said. “If they [the other riders] didn’t follow me I’d start the race last and then I’d try to come back during the race.”

But here’s an important detail within that rule – if the pre-race bike swap was to use different tyres – you must serve a ride-through penalty during the race.

Presumably Márquez didn’t know that part of the rule, although who knows, he might still have won the race from a ride-through.

And anyway it’s all irrelevant.

Márquez had played with them in Saturday’s sprint and looked like doing the same in Sunday’s Grand Prix.

The track was dry, but the kerbs weren’t, because they’re painted, so rain can’t seep through.

MotoGP riders in the Esses at the 2025 US Grand Prix

Márquez leads Márquez, Bagnaia and Di Giannantonio on Sunday

Gresini Racing

Márquez was riding super-fast, establishing a new lap record on lap seven of 19. By the end of the next lap he was already 2.3 seconds ahead of factory Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia, who had got the better of an early skirmish with Alex Márquez on the Gresini Ducati.

Márquez started lap eight looking like he always does — on the knife edge but sitting comfortably. He swept into COTA’s rattlesnake section — which sends riders left, right, left, right, left, right, left in less than twenty seconds – flicked left, flicked right and down he went.

And not because he was going too fast, because he was moving into controlling-the-race mode. And taking things a (tiny) little bit easier had him run wide through Turn 3, which put him in the wrong place for 4.

“I lost it super-quick. I lost a lot — I lost the front and I lost a lot of points”

“When the gap got to 2.5 seconds I tried to control,” Márquez added. “I forced a little less in Turn 3, then in Turn 4 I was maybe too much on the kerb. I lost it super-quick, maybe it was a little bit wet. I lost a lot — I lost the front and I lost a lot of points.

“But racing is like this. I keep saying the championship changes in a millisecond. The positive is I’m only one point behind the leader, that’s the most important thing.”

Many pitlane people thought Márquez’s first crash of the year — a purling highside followed by a faceplant during COTA’S rain-lashed FP1 – would knock out any over-confidence seeping within after his clean sweep of the Thai and Argentine GPs.

Especially after what he said when he arrived at COTA, “I try to think in a negative way to avoid too much confidence that can create a situation we don’t like”.

It obviously didn’t but Sunday’s crash surely should?

Bagnaia may have been gifted his first victory of 2025, but to finish first, first you must finish, and even without the win he was already sounding much happier than he had at Buriram and Termas. His issues are all about fine-tuning engine-brake maps and set-up balance, he says, so he is slowly getting back to the feeling he had last year.

Marc Marquez on Ducati in 2025 MotoGP US Grand Prix

Márquez restarted after the crash and rode several laps with no right footpeg before withdrawing

Dorna/MotoGP

“It’s fantastic to be back on the podium after such a difficult period,” he said.

In fact this is Bagnaia’s best-ever start to a MotoGP season: more points in the first three races than ever before. People writing off the twice champion after the first two weekends were forgetting that he’s a slow burner, he builds confidence bit by bit. If and when he gets the engine brake to where he can fly into corners with huge speed, he will be fully back.

Bagnaia is still third in the points chase, 11 behind the older Márquez and 12 behind the younger, who is the second of the siblings to have led all three grand prix world championships.

Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR46 Ducati) scored his first podium since 2023 with a rousing ride to third, with his injured left shoulder still not fully fixed. “A MotoGP bike consumes you,” he said.

VR46 team-mate Franky Morbidelli was way back in fourth and only just ahead of a dazzling Jack Miller, enjoying by far his best race since joining Pramac Yamaha. In fact his fifth place was the first MotoGP top five by a Japanese motorcycle since Fabio Quartararo was third in the 2023 Indonesian GP.

Luca Marini was the top Honda finisher in eighth, a few seconds behind Morbidelli, Miller, Marco Bezzecchi on the factory Aprilia and Enea Bastianini on a Tech 3 KTM. Marini’s fellow RC213V riders Johann Zarco and Joan Mir were fighting a bit closer to the front until they fell, trying to win back what they were losing to the KTM and Aprilia on the back straight by risky braking before the tight left.

Honda still stands second in the constructors’ championship, ahead of KTM, Aprilia and Yamaha. MotoGP never stops changing.