By Donovan Fourie | Guest Contributor | MotoGP Analyst
A new world champion
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new world champion. With five rounds to go, Marc Marquez has clinched his seventh premier class title. He did this after a five-year win drought, the longest drought between wins in MotoGP history. His last win was aboard the Honda in 2019, after which he suffered his famous arm break, followed by re-breaking it again four days after his first surgery. He then had two more surgeries after it first got infected, and then was reset again after surgeons set it skew in the previous operation.
Honda’s 2023 slump and the 2024 Gresini switch
In 2023, Honda had seemingly strayed in its development, and that year’s bike simply lacked competitiveness.
For 2024, Marquez took a reported $20 million pay cut to move to the satellite Gresini Ducati squad, a move he used as a gateway to a 2025 Factory Ducati seat, the most coveted in all of motorcycle racing.
One of the great comebacks
After injury, dud motorcycles and new teams, Marquez is now a champion again. He joins some of the greatest comebacks in motorcycle history, such as Mick Doohan, who nearly lost his leg in 1992, only to recover and win five titles. Or Barry Sheene in 1975, who was thrown into the Daytona banking at nearly 300km/h. He suffered a broken femur, a broken arm, a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and compression fractures of his vertebrae. He recovered to win two premier class titles.
These people are made from different stuff.
Bagnaia’s breakthrough at Motegi
Good news didn’t just befall Marc Marquez – his teammate, Pecco Bagnaia, who has had a torrid time this year struggling to come to terms with the 2025 Ducati, made a huge breakthrough.
After the previous round at Misano, the teams stayed behind for a day’s testing. During this test, Bagnaia tried various parts from the 2024 Ducati and found that he liked them very much. At the same time, he received help from two-time world champion Casey Stoner, who acted as a riding coach and setup consultant.
This seemed to work. In Japan, Bagnaia qualified on pole and won both the Sprint and Main Race – a triple header.
Ducati had much to celebrate – they took the rider’s championship, the manufacturer’s championship and, with Marquez taking runner-up spots in both races, a one-two in Japan.
Honda’s step forward at home
Honda, at its home race, had its share of celebration too. After struggling for the past few years, it savoured a podium with 2020 champ, Joan Mir.
The Japanese brand has been chipping away at its GP bike, especially at the Misano test, where it seemingly brought an entire bike’s worth of new parts to test. This strategy seems to have paid off – Honda went from mostly occupying the last spots in the field, to snatching the occasional top ten, to regularly getting top ten spots and now a podium.
How long before this becomes multiple podiums?
KTM surprises and the Acosta lesson
In the pre-race blog, we said that the stop/go nature of the Motegi Circuit would suit the KTMs and, seemingly, we were wrong. This year has been full of surprises, and three of the four KTMs struggled out of the top ten, except Pedro Acosta, who qualified in fourth and was up to second during the race. This is all while the next KTM, Brad Binder, languished in 12th, more than ten seconds behind.
Acosta is good at outright pace, whereas maintaining his tyres is perhaps a skill he needs to work on. By lap ten, his pace slowed, and he slipped back to sixth. Then, on lap 19, he got his braking very wrong going into Turn One, and did an exceptional job of ploughing the Motegi gravel trap.
Acosta has an exceptional pace. He now needs only to figure out his race strategy.
A healthier competitive mix
What was a good sign at Motegi was the variety of motorcycles in the top ten – five Ducatis, two Aprilias, two Hondas and one Yamaha.
That’s better than the previous distribution, where we had a bunch of Ducatis and maybe one or two other bikes.
The next step for MotoGP
Now, MotoGP needs to work on making overtaking easier, and it could have some really good races in its hands.