Was San Marino GP the hardest-fought victory for Marquez in MotoGP 2025?

For a rider accustomed to seizing the lead and disappearing into the distance, MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez had to dig far deeper to claim victory in Sunday’s San Marino Grand Prix.

While the Ducati rider was able to hit the front well before the halfway point of the race, Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi remained an ever-persistent threat, and it wasn’t until the final lap that Marquez’s triumph looked certain.

To analyse the race, it’s important to break it into two parts: the first 12 laps with Bezzecchi in the lead, and the remaining 15 with Marquez running at the front.

Bezzecchi holds off Marquez early on

At the start, Marquez went on the offensive, immediately shooting past the Yamaha of Fabio Quartararo before making light work of his brother Alex Marquez at Turn 1.

This mirrored his approach in the sprint, where he had jumped up to second behind polesitter Bezzecchi by Turn 2. Misano was only the fourth weekend of 2025 where he had failed to qualify on the front row, so it was crucial for the Spaniard to recover from that setback immediately.

But getting up to second was only half the job, and Marquez continued to hunt down Bezzecchi for the remainder of the lap, crossing the line just 0.162s behind him. 

The gap between the pair remained virtually the same on lap two, with Bezzecchi riding holding firm under constant pressure.

“Having this issue in braking, I made that small mistake. The bike made a strange movement. I didn’t want to lock the front, so I had to release the front brake and go a little bit wide and because of this Marc passed me” Marco Bezzecchi

This prompted a change of approach from Marquez, who settled half a second behind him, saving his tyres for a late attack.

If the pattern seen earlier in this season had been repeated, the Spaniard would have got closer to Bezzecchi with about a third of the race to go and then made a straightforward block pass for the lead.

But as the table below illustrates, Bezzecchi’s lap times started to drop from lap nine, as he began to struggle with braking on Michelin’s medium rear compound.

After two laps in the high 1m31s, Bezzecchi upped his pace to keep Marquez at bay, focusing on areas where the latter was the quickest – sectors one and two. But even then, Marquez was fractionally quicker and the gap between them was down to just 0.166s. 

As he continued to try his best to keep Marquez behind, Bezzecchi got out of shape at Turn 8 on lap 12, ceding the lead to the championship leader.

“Having this issue in braking, I made that small mistake,” he explained. “The bike made a strange movement. I didn’t want to lock the front, so I had to release the front brake and go a little bit wide and because of this Marc passed me.”

Bezzecchi ended up losing nine tenths on lap 12, and was now trailing Marquez by over half a second.

How Marquez held on to the lead

Marquez’s gap to Bezzecchi from lap 12 to 27

With still 15 laps to run, Marquez switched immediately into conservation mode, knowing there was no need to push at this stage of the race. To his credit, Bezzecchi managed to remain close to the Ducati, highlighting the strides Aprilia has made with the RS-GP.

The real showdown on lap 21, when Marquez set what was then the fastest lap of the race, a 1m31.386s.

Marquez would have expected an easy run to the finish thereafter, but Bezzecchi responded with his personal best lap, which was just two hundredths down on the Spaniard.

Two tours later, Bezzecchi set the outright fastest lap of the race, a 1m31.357s. The gap was down to just 0.305s and the battle was firmly on.

Ultimately, Marquez had too much left in reserve and hammered a 1m31.290s on lap 25, reasserting control at the front.

Bezzecchi did up his pace further on the penultimate lap in a last-ditch effort to snatch the lead, but he couldn’t break into the 1m31.2s bracket, allowing Marquez to claim his 11th grand prix win in 16 attempts.

While Bezzecchi ultimately never got close enough to attempt a move, he did force Marquez to push to his absolute limit in the final stages of the race – a rare test of the Spaniard’s mettle in 2025.

“When I took the lead, I tried to control the race,” Marquez said afterwards. “It’s not necessary to push on the limit 27 laps. I was there with a good rhythm in 1m31s, middle and high, and just tried to understand where the limit of the race track was. 

Marquez now leads the championship by 182 points

Photo by: Mirco Lazzari GP / Getty Images

“But then in the last laps I put everything, all my cards on the table. The reply from Marco was amazing. I was coming with a fast lap because I saw the lap time on my dashboard, but then I passed on the main straight and he was 0.5 behind, 0.4s, so he increased the speed also. But as always you try to take the risk when it’s necessary.”

Was this Marquez’s hardest-fought win of 2025?

At the chequered flag, Marquez’s winning margin over Bezzecchi was 0.568s, marking his third closest victory of 2025.

At the sprint race in Le Mans, he edged out his younger brother Alex by 0.530s, but he had slowed down significantly on the final lap to celebrate the triumph, and the real gap between the pair was easily more than a second.

“It was more difficult last weekend because I couldn’t [win] and Alex was faster. But yeah, I won this race and it was one of the toughest victories together with Assen, where Marco was pushing me” Marc Marquez

As such, for intents and purposes, this was his second-closest win of the year, only usurped by the Dutch GP sprint, where Alex Marquez hounded him until the last lap and finished just 0.0351s behind.

Marc Marquez’s narrowest victories in 2025

*slowed down on last lap

When Marquez was asked if this was the hardest he had to work to win a race in 2025, he said: “It was more difficult last weekend because I couldn’t [win] and Alex was faster. 

“But yeah, I won this race and it was one of the toughest victories together with Assen, where Marco was pushing me.

“But the heart rate was super high in the last laps [in Misano] and I was not thinking about the championship and Marco was not thinking about the championship [either], just thinking of the race.”

There have been a few occasions where Marquez had to fight so hard for a win. 

Of course, in some races this year he was fairly and squarely beaten. At the Spanish Grand Prix, he crashed early on while running in third place in what was arguably his most underwhelming performance of the season. Then in the sprint race at Silverstone, he made an early mistake and handed the lead to his Gresini-mounted brother, eventually finishing more than 3.5s behind in second. He also had to settle for third place in the British Grand Prix a day later, although that was before his dominant run began at the Aragon Grand Prix.

The only race where Marquez did duel for victory on equal terms with a rival and still lost out was the Catalan Grand Prix. At one of his weakest tracks, the 32-year-old tried his very best to extend his unbeaten run, but Alex Marquez simply had the upper hand over him on the GP24.

However, counting only races where Marc Marquez did win, the San Marino GP has to rank among his most difficult successes of 2025, especially when you consider his main opposition.

On a bike that is clearly nowhere as quick as the all-conquering GP25, Bezzecchi put on a strong show all weekend, taking pole, forcing Marquez into a crash in the sprint and then shadowing him throughout the GP.

Bezzecchi had already given Marquez a run for his money in the Dutch Grand Prix after starting from fifth on the grid, but this was a direct duel between the two, with no other rider lapping anywhere close to them.

While Marquez came away with the biggest prize of the weekend, Bezzecchi can now consider himself one of the only two riders to go toe-to-toe with MotoGP’s benchmark rider in 2025.

Marc Marquez’s stellar run continued in Misano, but Marco Bezzecchi finished a close-second to highlight Aprilia’s progress

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images