Twenty seconds less, twenty points more.
With four pole positions, six sprint wins and three Grands Prix victories, Marc Marquez has been MotoGP’s benchmark this season, his first with the factory Ducati team after crossing from the satellite Gresini Racing outfit over the off-season.
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But if he wins this year’s world title, he may look back at a day where he’s never been beaten by more into second place throughout his entire MotoGP career that gave him a significant advantage.
The most recent race in France, where Marquez finished second behind runaway winner Johann Zarco (Honda) by 19.907 seconds was, of the 36 times he’s finished second in a MotoGP career that stretches back to 2013, the furthest behind the winner the star Spaniard has ever been.
It’s not a flattering statistic for a rider who has spent most of 2025 flattening the opposition, but Marquez shone through the gloom of a rain-affected race in France relative to his primary championship rivals.
After he’d won the sprint race at Le Mans the day prior, second for Marquez in the main event saw him take home 32 points for the weekend. The five riders behind him in the standings heading in to Le Mans managed a combined 27.
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Following a Grand Prix where fellow Ducati riders Alex Marquez (twice), Franco Morbidelli and Francesco Bagnaia, along with Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, all crashed – and at an event that was Bagnaia’s worst in three years – Marquez left Le Mans beaten, but with his biggest championship advantage (22 points) of the season.
Serial winners like Marquez hate to lose, but knowing when to live to fight another day was worth more than any victory on a day where his rivals either blew big chances, had ruined their weekends before the Grand Prix even began, or were taken out of a madcap race through no fault of their own.
“It was the kind of day where you need to minimise the damage,” Marquez said.
“To score 20 points plus 12 from [the sprint] … we can say that was a good weekend.”
‘I KNOW MYSELF’: MARQUEZ FIGHTS THE URGE TO PUSH TOO FAR
Coming into Le Mans, Marquez – despite that aforementioned dominance – was looking up in the standings heading into round six.
Younger sibling Alex Marquez, by virtue of a career-best run of form, unerring consistency and a long-awaited maiden Grand Prix win at Jerez in his 94th premier-class start two weeks prior, took a one-point lead into Le Mans, the same margin he led big brother by after the Grand Prix of the Americas in round three in March.
In both of those races, Marc Marquez was the architect of his own demise, crashing from the lead of the Austin main race after running across a kerb still wet from a pre-race shower, and falling early in Spain before mounting a comeback that saw him surge from 22nd to 12th while nursing a bike badly damaged by sliding through the gravel trap on lap three.
PIT TALK PODCAST: In the latest episode of Pit Talk, hosts Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton review an absolutely crazy French Grand Prix at Le Mans won memorably by Johann Zarco, look at how a potential victory went begging for Jack Miller, and recap a crucial weekend in the title race for Marc Marquez.
Both were probable race wins and almost certain podiums he’d thrown away, which explained why Marquez was – for him – circumspect as the Le Mans race began in the type of half-wet, half-dry conditions he typically excels in.
Even for Le Mans – where half of the races since the advent of the MotoGP era since 2002 have been either partially or completely affected by rain – the minutes leading to the 2pm local start were nerve-jangling.
After every rider had set off on the formation lap to the grid on slick tyres – several were lucky to make it around as the rain intensified – all 22 riders piled back into the pits for bikes with wet-weather tyres, causing the start to be red-flagged and the race delayed by five minutes.
When 21 riders completed the second formation lap on wets – Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori, on slicks, was the one outlier – 13 of them immediately headed back to the pits to change back to slicks, feeling the track was drying despite local weather radars suggesting the rain was only going to get heavier.
Changing bikes before the start of the warm-up lap carries a double long-lap penalty, but Marc Marquez had a plan, and wasn’t about to waver.
“On the [second] sighting lap, I was not sure … I saw ‘Pecco’ [Bagnaia] went to the grid, and then I realised the racetrack was completely dry, so on that lap I copied Alex [Marquez],” he said.
“I waited for him, he go in [to the pits to change to a bike with dry-weather tyres] and I follow him.”
Covering off his championship-contending sibling was one thing; staying onboard his Ducati as the weather began to worsen was another. Quartararo, from pole, led early but slipped behind Marquez after the Frenchman elected to serve one of his long-lap penalties on lap four. By the end of the lap, the final corner of the circuit, Raccordement, was soaked.
Marquez made it through; Quartararo, and KTM’s Brad Binder immediately following, fell in choreographed crashes behind him. Binder was able to rejoin, but Quartararo – seething and later earning a penalty for his conduct with the trackside marshals – was out.
By the end of lap six, his lap times seven seconds off what he’d managed earlier in the race and barely faster than the first of the wet-tyre runners, Australia’s Jack Miller, Marquez pitted for wets. Alex Marquez, behind him on the road and with half an eye on the championship, followed him in.
“I know Alex, he knows me, and we speak before the race that it will be tricky conditions,” Marquez said.
“He copied me when I changed the slick [tyre].”
When Marquez rejoined, his brother behind him, and after every other rider had pitted to ensure the entire field was on wets as the rain tipped down on lap nine, Marquez was 8.548secs behind Zarco, who had started the race on wet tyres and became the leader after Miller threw away the benefits of his own wet-tyre strategy call by crashing while running 11 seconds ahead of the Frenchman.
Normally, a gap of that distance and a victory in prospect is enough for Marquez to twist the throttle harder. But Marquez was more cognisant of what was behind him, not ahead.
“In one point when I go out with the rain [tyres], I pushed and I saw that I was closing to Johann [Zarco], but eight seconds was too much risk,” he said.
“I thought ‘let’s see if he burns the tyres’ because normally, when you do three or four laps on dry conditions [on wet tyres], sometimes you destroy the tyres and you cannot ride fast in the wet.
“I pushed for two laps and I see that I was just half a second, three-tenths, even zero faster than him and I said ‘eight seconds are too much’.
“I was just trying to control Alex [Marquez] … yes, he’s my brother but he’s the main opponent for the championship at the moment, he’s the one that is closest to me. I just tried to manage the distance between him.”
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As Zarco pulled away corner by corner, lap by lap, a 120,000-strong home crowd urging him on, Marquez kept hitting his markers and listening out for the Ducati of his brother behind him. With six laps left, Alex – impeccable all season, made a mistake and fell at turn three; after remounting and circulating in sixth place, he crashed out for good with four laps to go. An afternoon of consolidation for Marc Marquez had suddenly become a decisive championship moment.
“I was controlling myself all the time, I was just trying to score the maximum points and didn’t exaggerate,” he said.
“I tried to be full focus all the race because the first five or six laps were crazy and super demanding on the mental side to understand what you need to do.
“The track was changing super quick … less water, more water, the grip was changing a lot and it was difficult to adapt the riding style to the conditions.
“In those conditions I was convinced of my decisions, this is the most important.”
Convinced, too, that he wasn’t going to throw away points through pushing beyond his limits for a second straight race, acknowledging his Jerez howler played into his thinking.
“These kinds of Sundays, you can easily do a mistake,” he said, grinning as he admitted he’d had to repress his instincts.
“I did a mistake in Jerez, [so I] avoid the mistake today. Maybe if I come with a victory from Jerez … I’m not 100 per cent sure but maybe 80 per cent sure I would crash, because I know myself.”
RIVALS FALL BY THE WAYSIDE, ONE BY ONE
Zarco, despite his coolly-taken second MotoGP victory, is 99 points behind Marc Marquez and doesn’t figure to be a title threat. The Frenchman’s home-race joy was in stark contrast to Marquez’s potential title rivals, all of whom had miserable Le Mans races.
Alex Marquez (second in the standings ahead of France) and Quartararo (sixth) both crashed out. VR46 Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli, fourth heading into Le Mans, served two long-lap penalties, crashed, remounted and limped home in 15th. Morbidelli’s teammate, Fabio Di Giannantonio (fifth), qualified a season-worst 17th and could only make his way forward to eighth in the race.
And then there was Marc Marquez’s teammate, Bagnaia. The 2022 and ’23 world champion has been underwhelming relative to his new partner in red so far in 2025, but picked up the win in Texas when Marquez crashed and scored solidly in every other round to trail Marquez by just 19 points heading into Le Mans.
France, though, was a disaster. The Italian crashed out of the sprint – all his own fault – on the second lap on Saturday, but was the best-placed rider to take advantage of what became the winning tyre strategy on Sunday, Bagnaia starting on the same wet-weather tyres used by Zarco (and Miller) from sixth on the grid.
What was – potentially – a winning move was scuppered by former Ducati teammate Enea Bastianini on the first lap; now with KTM, Bastianini – on faster, slick tyres – careered down the inside of turn three and clattered into Bagnaia, who fell from his bike and collected Honda’s Joan Mir, who fell into Zarco.
Zarco – somehow – stayed on, while Mir hit the tarmac and fractured his right hand. Bagnaia was able to continue with a broken bike, and while he circulated in the hope that attrition would enable him to finish inside the top 15 and score points, he crossed the line in 16th and last place after 26 laps, failing to score a single point across a weekend for the first time since the advent of MotoGP’s Saturday sprint race era in 2023.
Bagnaia was incredibly unlucky, the rest of Marquez’s title rivals wasteful. By fighting against his competitive urges, Marquez suddenly had a lead bigger than the eight points he enjoyed after round one in Thailand, the 16-point advantage he took away from Argentina a round later, or the 17-point lead he had after Qatar.
That round four victory at Lusail – a track he’d not won at since 2014 – ticked a big box for Marquez, beating teammate Bagnaia on one of the Italian’s stronger circuits. Silverstone next time out – Marquez hasn’t won the British Grand Prix for 11 years, and has only won it once – isn’t a task he feels is too tall.
Now he finally has the series lead that reflects his speed means there’s zero thoughts of letting it slip, again.
Asked after Le Mans what tracks he anticipates he may struggle at with Silverstone looming, Marquez paused.
“Nowhere,” he shrugged, the assembled press pack laughing.
“Of course, we will arrive at some race tracks where I will struggle, but I will not arrive before the weekend thinking that I will struggle. After Friday [practice], I will see if I’m struggling or not. After Qatar, that was a very demanding GP for me but successful, so I’m not scared about any racetrack.
“In Silverstone I expect Alex will be super fast there, for his riding style it will be better than here [Le Mans]. For me, the most important target will be to reconfirm what we tried in the Jerez test and what we tried here to see at Silverstone if it is working, because it’s a completely different layout, racetrack and riding style.
“We have that [championship] advantage, so the main thing is to not waste that advantage in the way we did in Austin and Jerez.”