After four years of mostly bad breaks, things finally broke right for Marc Marquez.
The Spaniard has been battered physically and bruised emotionally since the season-opening crash in 2020 that smashed his right arm and stopped his MotoGP domination cold over the subsequent four years, four surgeries and slow recoveries seeing him miss nearly 45 per cent of the races since that fateful day at Jerez in 2020, and being lucky to be 50 per cent when he did race until 2023.
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His beloved Aragon, though, offered a pathway to salvation – and so it proved on Sunday when the Gresini Ducati rider took his long-awaited 60th Grand Prix win, 1043 days after he’d won the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in 2021. It capped the perfect weekend where Marquez led all three practice sessions, took pole position by the biggest margin in a dry qualifying (0.840 seconds) since 2011, and was never headed in both Saturday’s 11-lap sprint and Sunday’s Grand Prix proper.
Why such a dramatic turnaround? Aragon’s anticlockwise layout and its surplus of left-hand corners suits Marquez’s signature style, honed on flat track motocross over many years, to shine brightest, but the 31-year-old felt it was another strength that proved pivotal to victories by 2.961secs (sprint) and 4.789secs (Grand Prix), new championship leader Jorge Martin trailing him home on both occasions but never able to challenge.
Aragon was resurfaced in the lead-up to this year’s round after the circuit’s absence from the 2023 calendar, the dark, still-curing asphalt slicker than most tracks as it bedded in beneath a baking northern hemisphere Spanish sun. Add to that the track’s location in the desert outside of rural Alcaniz, a three-hour drive from Barcelona, and that slippery surface was caked in dust and dirt when it was dry – and then washed clean on both Friday and Saturday night after heavy thunderstorms, the circuit effectively having a hard reset three times in one weekend.
It was all about who could think on their feet and live on their wits, and Marquez – one of the great improvisers – took full advantage.
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“One of my strong points, and this was one of the key points of the weekend, is to adapt to the conditions,” he said.
“I’m super quick to adapt on the conditions, to arrive on the limit. These conditions help me to have that margin, but we need to be realistic because the conditions were super special.”
Still, those conditions were the same for the 21 other riders on the grid, and one of them – KTM’s Jack Miller – had his own thoughts about Marquez’s mastery after finishing in 10th, nearly 40 seconds adrift, before being demoted to 15th after a post-race penalty.
“Today, Marc put on a f**king clinic,” the ever-unfiltered Australian said.
“When I was exiting from Turn 7, there was a big screen there and I could see he was already in the chicane going onto the back straight and that’s a really s**tty feeling because there’s a lot of corners between you and him. You got an idea as to how big the gap was. All weekend he looked like he’d been on rails.”
Marquez’s seventh win at Aragon in all – six in MotoGP – was the headline act of the return of the Spanish circuit to the calendar, but elsewhere, a contentious clash changed the world championship picture to leave Martin, arguably more than Marquez, the biggest winner from round 12.
WEIGHT OFF: WIN LIGHTENS LOAD FOR MARQUEZ
The Marquez of 2024 isn’t the open book he was earlier in his career, where his daring exploits on-track were matched by an enthusiasm to revel in and excitedly discuss them afterwards. Injuries, age and the controversial Malaysia 2015 clash with Valentino Rossi that changed perceptions of both riders’ careers is part of that, which made his instinctive reaction when asked where Sunday’s Aragon win rated in his career so telling.
As the adrenaline began to wear off in the post-race press conference, Marquez pondered the question. When you’ve won as much as he has in the premier class – but not for so long – he had renewed perspective, eventually settling on a win when his body was still partly broken and one from long ago as the only victories that felt comparable, given what he’d gone through over those 1043 previous days.
“I put in an equal level as 2021 in Germany,” he said, recalling his first victory since his 2020 crash that, at several stages, looked to have ended his winning ways, and perhaps his career.
“When you have a lot of injuries, a very deep moment, so the value of a victory [like today] is different. It’s true that I won 60 times, but those two victories, together with my first one in MotoGP [Americas Grand Prix of 2013] are the most important ones.
“It was difficult to control the emotions in the last laps, but when I crossed the finish line I felt like I lost three to four kilos. To achieve that victory was incredible, and immediately I started to think about all the process we had, all the people around me, my family … they helped me a lot.
“Is strange, because some victories the explosion [of emotion] was even more, but this one, the value of the victory is super important. Today was emotion more than adrenaline. “
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The win, combined with a disastrous Aragon weekend for erstwhile championship leader Francesco Bagnaia, saw Marquez rise to third in the standings and within 70 points of series leader Martin with eight rounds remaining, ample time and points on the table to push for a seventh MotoGP title if he can replicate the form he showed at Aragon.
It wasn’t a statistical probability Marquez was ready to contemplate, though.
“We take another target [with victory], and now it’s time to keep going,” he said.
“We are far, we are too far. It’s not just one rider [to beat] … there are two riders [Martin and Bagnaia] who have more consistency than us. One weekend will not change our life. Of course it will help our life but we are too far to fight for the championship this year.
“Let’s see if we can fight for that top three position, this is a realistic goal.”
BAGNAIA, MARQUEZ AT ODDS OVER UGLY CRASH
That Martin left Aragon with the series lead after finishing behind Marquez in both races owed itself in part to a rare shocker for Bagnaia, who struggled to get off the dirty left-hand side of the grid in both races from third place and watched both go pear-shaped, and fast.
Saturday’s sprint saw him plummet back down the field to ninth and score one solitary point, pointedly but non-verbally pointing the finger at a lack of grip from Michelin’s tyres on the slippery surface as being his undoing.
A similarly poor getaway on Sunday was mitigated by the reigning world champion catching Alex Marquez’s Ducati for third in the closing stages before the biggest flashpoint of the event, and arguably the season.
With Bagnaia in hot pursuit, the younger Marquez sibling ran deep into the Turn 12 left-hander and cut back to the inside of the right-hander at Turn 13 that followed with six laps left. His bike clipped Bagnaia and then pinned Bagnaia to the ground as the pair skated off into the trackside gravel trap in an ugly crash that saw Bagnaia lucky to escape without serious injury, and one that the race stewards declared a racing incident.
After bringing a five-point lead to Aragon, Bagnaia’s dreadful one-point weekend saw him fall 23 points behind Martin, his biggest deficit since he left Catalunya in round six in May 39 points behind the Pramac Ducati rider in the standings.
Unsurprisingly, both riders – who met in private afterwards to clear the air – had markedly differing accounts of the incident, and who was to blame.
“What makes me more angry is looking at the data,” Bagnaia, who said his neck was “hurting a lot” after being stuck under Marquez’s crashed bike, said.
“As soon as I was entering the corner, I was in front, leaving space because I was knowing that he was there, but I was with much more speed so I didn’t need to close the line to be in front. And as soon as I entered the corner, I heard his engine, his throttle opening. This is bad. Even worse is the fact he remained with 40-60 per cent throttle until he crashed.
“It’s very dangerous, to have someone that does something like this … [Marquez is] a rider deciding not to let me finish.”
Marquez, who was on track for his second Grand Prix podium of the season and on course for a strong weekend after qualifying fifth and finishing fourth in the sprint, felt it was a crash Bagnaia could have elected to avoid.
“He knew I was there, so at least leave me one metre … no more,” Marquez said.
“If somebody could have avoided the contact, it was him. I didn’t see him in any moment. I was not expecting the contact. I touched the kerb [at Turn 12], I’m inside the track … so the one behind needs to take care.
“People will say ‘you need to have more respect for the guys that are playing for the championship’, [but] didn’t know it was him.”
MARTIN: BAGNAIA EXIT MADE RACE FEEL LONGER
Martin leaving Aragon with his biggest championship lead in over three months was against the run of play, Bagnaia having won five of the previous six Grands Prix coming into Round 12 and Martin’s most recent Sunday success coming in France in May.
But the Pramac Ducati rider – who is leaving for Aprilia next season – has been a model of consistency this year after last season’s title challenge to Bagnaia unravelled with unforced errors, his pair of second places at Aragon the 18th and 19th podiums in 24 starts in 2024.
The Spaniard admitted it wasn’t the most exciting way to enter the final eight rounds from a position of ascendancy, but it’s an advantage that he’ll gladly take, even if Bagnaia’s exit from the race as the laps counted down played on his mind.
“Myself, I did my maximum … [Marc Marquez] was on his 100 per cent so it’s difficult to beat him,” Martin said.
“I did the most I could. I didn’t feel good all the weekend, I was doing a lot of changes to the bike and I think I achieved the best possible result.
“When Pecco [Bagnaia] crashed, I looked to my pit board and there were still six or seven laps to go, they were quite long because I just wanted to finish. So I was just cruising, trying to make it to the end without any risk, and this was the most difficult [part] of the race.”
Despite being the beneficiary of Bagnaia being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Martin was keen to emphasis that this second place – his fourth in the past five Grands Prix – was different, and had him cautious ahead of the San Marino Grand Prix next weekend at Misano, where he beat an injury-compromised Bagnaia 12 months ago.
“From my side, the championship at the moment is not so important, more the thing is that we are always strong,” he said.
“Lately, Silverstone we were close, Austria we were close, here we were far away from the victory … but I’m always there. Last time here [at Aragon, 2022] I was far … now I am second. Misano will be difficult with the Italian riders super strong – I feel we can fight for a victory, but it will be difficult.”
MILLER COPS PENALTY TO PROLONG PAIN
With Bagnaia, Alex Marquez and Miguel Oliveira (Aprilia) all crashing out ahead of him, Miller looked set for his best race result since round two in Portugal when he crossed the line in 10th place, only to be penalised 16 seconds for racing with tyre pressures below the minimum specified level and dropping to 15th, leaving Aragon with just one championship point to stay 15th in the standings.
The Australian wasn’t alone in falling foul of MotoGP’s strict tyre pressure rules – Ducati’s Fabio Di Giannantonio fell from seventh to eighth for a similar offence and sanction, while Aprilia’s Raul Fernandez stayed a pointless 16th after his own penalty.
More alarming for Miller was his deficit to KTM factory teammate Brad Binder (fourth, 23secs ahead after 23 laps) and GasGas rookie Pedro Acosta, riding the same RC16 machine for the Austrian manufacturer.
Acosta, mired in a run of outs that had taken some of the shine off the 20-year-old’s early-season heroics, was third in both the sprint and Grand Prix at Aragon, nearly 15 seconds behind Marquez on Sunday, but with his first Grand Prix rostrum result after back-to-back podiums in Portugal and the Americas in rounds two and three.
Miller, whose expected 2025 contract with Pramac Yamaha is set to be announced this week ahead of Pramac’s home race at Misano, admitted he didn’t have the belief to push harder.
“In the race I had no real big mistakes, I was just struggling to stay with those boys,” he said.
“I had an opportunity with that group in front of me, and just wasn’t able to do that. We’re missing a little bit, myself personally, missing a little bit of speed and a little bit of confidence.
“Yesterday [the track] was dirty, it’s been dirty the majority of the weekend. Today [the track] just seemed more greasy, but it was just as treacherous.”