Talented on the bike, tactically cunning off it.
Marc Marquez didn’t become a six-time MotoGP world champion simply by riding faster than everyone else; the 32-year-old Spaniard never misses a trick in his never-ending quest to extract even the smallest advantage out of an adverse situation.
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And minutes before Sunday’s Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin, Marquez – on pole for a record eighth time at the Circuit of the Americas and with a championship lead to protect, was in adverse territory. Time to think, literally, on his feet.
Pre-race rain made the track so treacherous that Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo had crashed on the sighting lap to the grid. But with the track rapidly drying as the clock ticked down to lights out, Marquez stood beside his bike still shod with wet-weather tyres, the moment to legally change to slicks within three minutes of the race starting having come and gone.
Then, Marquez played his hand.
Sprinting off the grid to return to the pits for his spare bike equipped with slick tyres, Marquez triggered a host of his rivals to do the same.
Ducati teammate Francesco Bagnaia, watching Marquez closely from sixth on the grid, was first to react. Others, including Australia’s Jack Miller, did the same. In all, 10 riders were running down pit lane for their second bikes, seconds before the race was set to begin. It was chaos, and led to the race start being aborted and then delayed for 10 minutes.
Marquez knew the rule that, should more than 10 riders leave the grid, the start would be immediately aborted. If fewer than 10 riders left the grid, the riders who did would be penalised with a ride-through penalty in the race that followed.
It was a calculated gamble that his peers – knowing his remarkable success rate of seven COTA wins in 10 starts – would see what the grid’s fastest rider was doing and follow suit.
Marquez admitted as much afterwards.
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“I really know the rules and how to do, how to be on the limit all the time,” he said.
“I asked to [Marco] Rigamonti, my chief mechanic, seven minutes before the start if the second bike was ready [in the garage]. He told me yes, and I say to him ‘maybe I will leave the grid’. I saw that the rain tyres was not the correct strategy, and then I predict that when I leave, more than 10 riders will follow me and then they will stop the race. That’s what happened.
“We did everything well, we did everything perfect.”
Well, not quite. After the race was shortened by a lap to 19 laps and eventually started, Marquez predictably led the field – all now on slick tyres – through a madcap first lap before pulling away.
Nine laps in and with a lead of over two seconds from Bagnaia, an extension of his perfect start to 2025 beckoned before he attacked the still-wet kerb at turn four that little bit too aggressively, sliding off as his slick tyres lost grip.
In 2019 and again in 2024, Marquez had crashed from the lead at one of his most successful circuits. Sunday’s gaffe was an unwanted hat-trick, and one that came with both championship consequences and a bullet dodged for MotoGP’s race control.
“We did the most difficult [task] and in the easiest moment of the race, where I was trying to control the distance, I cut a bit too much that kerb and I lose the front,” Marquez explained.
“The kerb I already cut some laps before … I just cut too much. I was too optimistic. I was fully concentrated, it was not with that extra confidence. There was a mistake, I lose 25 points … but we need to keep going on the same way and do the same speed, because I feel faster everywhere.”
Marquez’s mistake handed Bagnaia his first win of the season after a muted start, and ensured younger brother Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati) would finish second for the sixth time in six starts, taking over at the top of the championship standings by one point from big brother to lead the points table for the first time in his six-year career.
Fellow Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, weeks after snapping his collarbone in pre-season testing, was a remarkable and exhausted third, joking he would have “100 to 200 beers” to celebrate.
Miller, who started ninth, equalled his best result from 2024 on just his third start with Yamaha with fifth place, the first non-Ducati rider across the line as the Italian factory locked out the podium once again and won its 20th consecutive Grand Prix.
Yet afterwards, all everyone could talk about was Marc Marquez. At COTA, that’s not unusual. This time though, it was for nearly unprecedented reasons, and a rule change that had Miller at its core.
WHEN 10 IS NOT ‘MORE THAN’ 10
In Argentina in 2018, in a similar situation where the track was soaked by a pre-race shower of rain but drying rapidly, Miller elected to start the race on slick tyres while the rest of the field all piled into pit lane to switch from wet tyres to dries after the warm-up lap.
With 23 riders set to start the race from the pit lane in what was clearly a dangerous situation, race control aborted the start and then had the rest of the field line up in grid order behind the last-place grid slot, leading to the bizarre sight of pole-sitter Miller beginning the race with a 50-metre head start, his advantage from correctly reading the conditions before the warm-up lap counting for nothing in a chaotic situation.
As a consequence of that bizarre set of circumstances, MotoGP implemented Article 1.18.1 to its regulations, specifying that more than 10 riders having to start from pit lane in a similar situation requires the start to be aborted, the key words being “more than”.
On Sunday, exactly 10 riders – both Marquez brothers, Bagnaia, Di Giannantonio, his VR46 teammate Franco Morbidelli, Pedro Acosta (KTM), Miller, Joan Mir (Honda), KTM’s Maverick Vinales and Ducati rookie Fermin Aldeguer – all left the grid.
Of the 12 riders who didn’t follow Marc Marquez’s lead, three – KTM’s Brad Binder (16th on the grid), stablemate Enea Bastianini (17th) and Aprilia’s Ai Ogura (18th) – all stayed on the grid on slick tyres, and would have been advantaged had the race commenced as normal.
In effect, with exactly 10 riders – not more than 10 – sprinting back into pit lane, the race should have begun as normal. But race director Mike Webb, in a statement, said the decision to delay was made on safety grounds.
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“We called for a delay and then quick start procedure due to safety concerns,” the statement said. “Given the number of riders, bikes and pit staff on the grid and in the pitlane area, it was impossible to start the warm-up lap. A new race start was the safest way to respond to the unprecedented circumstances at the start of the grand prix. We will analyse the situation together with the teams and revisit the regulations.”
With Marquez triggering the delay and then clearing off to lead once the race eventually began and with race direction having to acknowledge it hadn’t followed the rules, a Marquez victory would have been as controversial as it was predictable before his crash at half race-distance; while he was able to continue at the back of the pack for three laps, the right footpeg of his Ducati had been sheared off in the crash and his bike’s windscreen shattered, and he retired three laps later.
Afterwards, Bagnaia said he had an inkling Marquez was going to bolt for his spare bike right at the last minute.
“I was seeing that he wasn’t on the bike, he wasn’t seated,” Bagnaia said.
“I was thinking he was doing it, I was thinking to do the same because the starting grid was completely dry, the first corner was looking dry, so I said ‘if I start in this situation, I will lose too much time’.
“As soon as I see him doing it, I follow. It was the correct choice. Luckily much riders follow, so they had to stop.”
Alex Marquez, in third on the grid, was initially bewildered when his sibling sprinted past.
“In the first moment I think he forget something like you have on the grid, like ear plugs or something,” he explained.
“But then they showed ‘Pecco’ [Bagnaia, leaving the grid] … then I remembered that rule, when Marc was in MotoGP and I was in Moto2 they put in that [rule]. It was not the best for the start delayed, but the show was unbelievable … for sure everybody was saying ‘what the f**k they are doing?’.
“We need a clear rule for that, it’s not really clear. If they delayed the start just for the chaos, it’s not the correct way. It’s not fair that if somebody takes the risk [with slick tyres] and [a rival] makes a start delay … imagine if I was on slicks on the grid, it was not fair.”
BAGNAIA THANKFUL FOR MARQUEZ GIFT
With Marc Marquez not in a top-three press conference – for qualifying, a sprint race or Grand Prix – for the first time all season, it was hard to know who was happiest out of Bagnaia, Alex Marquez and Di Giannantonio afterwards.
Bagnaia has been pummelled by Marquez’s speed in their first three rounds as teammates before inheriting Sunday’s win, while Alex Marquez was still coming to terms with leading the MotoGP standings.
Di Giannantonio, clearly on the limit physically after admitting his left shoulder was “at 0 per cent” for the season-opener in Thailand just four weeks ago, was as elated as he was exhausted.
“I know that the win comes from the crash of Marc, he was faster than everybody else today, so I was just trying to match the pace in the best way possible,” Bagnaia said.
“Form what happened on the start of the season, the first test … I was struggling to find back my feeling on braking, so this weekend helped me find back what I was searching for.
“Compared to last year here, I was feeling better. Last year here I was struggling much more, I was losing much more time. I finish fifth … so I did a very good step. The next one is Qatar, which is a very good track for me so I will try to continue to improve.”
Alex Marquez said hearing he is now leading the championship standings would take time to sink in.
“Big words … big, big words,” he said.
“If you said to me after the third race you will be leading the championship, I would say to you that you were crazy.”
“When I saw Marc crashing, it was like advice to me … today the mistakes, you will pay a lot. It was really easy to make mistakes, and I was not feeling good on the bike.”
MILLER RIDES HIS LUCK FOR SEASON-BEST SHOWING
Miller could find the humour in Argentina 2018 being brought back to the forefront of discussion after the race – “if you’re going to feel sorry for somebody getting f**ked over by the rules …” he mused when asked if Binder, Bastianini and Ogura had been unfairly disadvantaged by the decision to abort the start – but was thankful for the delay after his decision to follow Marquez by sprinting into pit lane for his spare bike almost had disastrous consequences.
In the mayhem of riders running off the grid, Miller found his spare bike was still shod with wet tyres, and the Yamaha rider would have been at a significant disadvantage if the race start wasn’t red-flagged and delayed for 10 minutes.
“I set a land speed record running back to the [pit] box, but we got away with it because I left a bike with wet [tyres] and got back to a bike with wets.
“I thought ‘what the f**k’s going on here?’ so thank god they red-flagged it, because I was f**ked either way. We got a chance to take five [minutes], put the right tyres in and everybody relaxed. We had luck on our side today.”
After a poor first lap in Saturday’s 10-lap sprint dropped him from ninth on the grid to a 14th-place finish, Miller made amends 24 hours later with a decisive move down the inside into the first corner, and he ran inside the top six for the entire race, gaining a place when Marc Marquez crashed out.
Ducati rookie Aldeguer passed Miller with three laps left but crashed out soon after, leaving the Australian to bank 11 world championship points to advance to 10th in the standings with 19 points.
“The bike was working well and I got away to a decent start, which was half the battle here,” he said.
“The first lap was chaotic with all of the [wet] patches and when you have all the bikes in a row, you can’t see what’s really coming up, you’re just following with blind faith.
“I settled into my rhythm … I did my best lap six laps from the end, trying to nurse that soft tyre home and make sure I had enough for the end.
“I’m happy to be back in the top five … to come away in tricky conditions like that with a solid race with no real mistakes at all, it was solid pace and I enjoyed it.”