How Alex Marquez channelled Marc’s fall to grab his chance for first MotoGP win

For a man who had made a habit of hanging out in second place this year, fourth position on lap three was an unlikely spot from which to launch a run to victory in the Spanish Grand Prix. But, when you dig a little deeper, it starts to look like that was all part of Alex Marquez’s destiny to score his breakthrough MotoGP grand prix triumph.

The Gresini Ducati rider was lucky to even be so high up the order at that point. The Spaniard had held his grid position – also fourth – after the start but survived an exceedingly hairy moment at the end of the back straight on the opening lap. In an ill-calculated manoeuvre, he had arrived at Pedrosa corner far too fast, very nearly taking out his brother Marc as he shot between him and Francesco Bagnaia.

After running deep and wide, he did well to slot back into fourth behind Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) and the factory Ducati pair. This was about as low as Alex had run all season, bar the previous round in Qatar, where a brief brush with Marc and then a bigger one with Fabio di Giannantonio had him operating in unfamiliar midfield territory. The stars did not appear to be aligning as laps two and three unfolded.

Sure, early leader and polesitter Quartararo might very well come back towards the pack. The Frenchman had assured the world all weekend that his M1 was not going to do well over 25 laps. But Bagnaia in second place appeared to be a tougher nut to crack on the factory GP25. The Italian had outqualified Alex for the first time this year and had looked decidedly racy against Marc on the first tour.

But the real problem, of course, was that Marc was one spot ahead of Alex. And big brother, we have come to accept in 2025, always gets the edge if he finishes the race. And the one time Marc didn’t finish the race, in America a month earlier, was the one time this season Bagnaia had woken up and beaten Alex in a straight battle.

There may be 20 other riders on the grid most weekends, but in 2025 Alex has lived in a world dominated by only one of them. Saturday, when he trailed Marc home by almost exactly a second to earn another runner-up spot in the sprint race, typified his year so far.

And that’s why the leading pair would have been almost invisible to Alex as the field shot towards Curva Aspar on lap three. Mentally as much as on the track, his horizon was full of Marc.

That’s when another Texas moment came. The throngs on the Jerez hillside dropped their sherries and roared in shock as their celebrated countryman Marc came shooting into view, not on the asphalt but in the gravel trap. The champion-elect was down and out of contention. Marc had once again thrown down a gift to anyone willing to take it.

For Alex, the first to clock that his brother was going down, things suddenly clicked. He was going to grab the present with both hands this time. “When I saw Marc crashing at Turn 8, I said, ‘OK, today is your day – you cannot lose that opportunity again like in Austin,’” he recalled. “In that moment it was like ‘OK – click’. Marc activated me. And he activated me in a really good way.”

In hindsight, then, it may have been a good thing that Alex had qualified an unusually low fourth and was behind Marc when the crash happened. In retrospect, perhaps it was also for the best that his banzai attack on the Ducatis on lap one hadn’t worked out. Had he not witnessed Marc sliding out at such close quarters, would the same determination and belief have taken shape inside him?

“Seven laps from the end I was losing a little bit of concentration, honestly speaking. And I said, ‘OK, try to push again, try to do your lap times again and try to go back into focus mode’. I was thinking about too many things” Alex Marquez

What’s clear is that Alex bottled whatever magic he got from that moment and used it to wonderful effect. There were, after all, another 22 laps left to run in the hot Andalusian sun. And there was the small matter of dispensing with Bagnaia and Quartararo. “Without Marc, I knew that I was the strongest one,” said Alex after the race. And there was no way you could argue with that after he made passing these two champions look so easy.

Alex got sweet revenge for Austin when he passed Bagnaia in no time at all. It was a straightforward, committed move on the brakes at the end of lap four. Remember, he was on a supposedly inferior bike, at a track where overtaking on a MotoGP machine is not an easy task. And it was almost immediately clear that Pecco, down on confidence right now, was broken as a potential challenger.

Then followed a display of patience of which Marc himself would have been proud. Well aware that Quartararo did not have the tools to fend off a Ducati, Alex knew there was no hurry. Clocking up a few steady laps in the Frenchman’s dirty air to keep up his tyre pressures – MotoGP riders have to think about these things – would do his cause no harm.

Marquez was patient in his pursuit of Quartararo, and was ultimately rewarded

Photo by: Jorge Guerrero – AFP – Getty Images

When his move for the lead came on lap 11, it was clean and concise. The fact that Alex went by Quartararo at Turn 1, one of the less common passing spots on the circuit, suggested he was able to choose his moment at will.

Another handy bit of hindsight: it was probably a good thing Alex was fourth rather than his usual second when Marc fell. Keeping busy with Bagnaia and Quartararo meant he wouldn’t be left alone with his thoughts, in the lead, for almost an entire race distance. Fourteen laps was more than enough of that for a man on the verge of finally breaking into the winner’s circle – particularly in his home race.

“Yeah, seven laps from the end I was losing a little bit of concentration, honestly speaking,” he admitted. “And I said, ‘OK, try to push again, try to do your lap times again and try to go back into focus mode’. I was thinking about too many things, like the team, how to celebrate… so I said, ‘OK, come on, seven laps to go. They can still do something. These guys that you have behind you are in the MotoGP world championship!’”

All the self-chat did the job: Alex Marquez is not only a Moto3 and Moto2 world champion but now also a MotoGP race winner. And he is once again in the lead of the 2025 world championship, albeit only by a single point over Marc.

It was one of the more emotional wins you’re going to see. It all came out in the tears on the podium. The six years he’d been trying to get this done. The endless questions about, and comparisons with, his brother. The fact that this dream came true at MotoGP’s atmosphere citadel, exactly the circuit he’d have chosen. A track that happens to be in his homeland.

There may have been something else wrapped up in the post-race outpouring too: a nagging sense that this may have been his last chance to go wheel to wheel with the factory Ducatis any time soon. When he was asked about how he was going to come back down to earth in time for Monday’s official test, he admitted “we don’t have many items to test” on the GP24. That would certainly not be the case for Marc and Bagnaia in the red garage next door.

While Alex was happy to joke about knocking off early on Monday for some celebratory jamon and tapas, the relief that would have come with this win was serious. The Monday test means there might be a tangible technical hierarchy among the Ducatis when the circus turns up at Le Mans in two weeks – in which case Alex will be hard-pressed to repeat his Andalusian success.

The cards may have fallen for the junior Marquez just in time on Sunday. Whether you call it destiny is a matter of interpretation – but Alex certainly grabbed his hand and played it perfectly at Jerez.

Alex Marquez knows he faces an uphill task taking the fight to factory-spec Marc Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia, so savoured his maiden premier class grand prix win

Photo by: Javier Soriano – AFP – Getty Images