It’s a good thing that riding a motorcycle – and rapidly – has worked out for Alex Marquez.
Because on the strength of the Spanish Grand Prix, the Ducati rider’s prospects of becoming a soothsayer are slim to none.
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Rewind to the pre-event press conference at Jerez on Thursday – on his 30th birthday – and last year’s Spanish Grand Prix winner was asked about his chances of going back-to-back to arrest a slow start to his 2026 season, one where expectations were raised after he’d finished as championship runner-up to older brother Marc last year.
Was another Sunday as the Jerez home hero on the cards after his breakthrough first Grand Prix win at the same circuit 12 months ago?
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“Definitely not,” he shrugged. “It’s a little bit not realistic in this moment. The first part of the season has been a little bit difficult for us.”
Marquez had that last part right, at least.
Through three races in Thailand, Brazil and Texas, the Gresini Ducati rider hadn’t finished better than fourth in a sprint (Texas), or sixth in a full-distance Grand Prix (Brazil).
As for the rest of his crystal ball-gazing? He missed. By miles.
Marquez was comfortably the fastest man in practice on Friday, was understandably miffed when inclement weather saw him qualify fifth on Saturday, and then crestfallen when he fell from the lead of the 12-lap sprint on Saturday with four laps left. When you’re in a sweet spot in dry conditions on a track where you’ve previously tasted success, the last thing you need is for the heavens to open.
Come Sunday, with the sun beating down on the packed hillsides beside the track that saw 100,000-plus fans in attendance and zero chance of a view of the 13-turn track if you weren’t inside the gates before dawn, the scale of Marquez’s advantage quickly became clear.
From fifth on the grid, he was past Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati), Johann Zarco (Honda) and championship leader Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) within a lap. Six corners into the second lap, older brother and pole-sitter Marc Marquez was dispatched for the lead at turn six. Five corners after that, Marc was on the ground after a 200km/h-plus get-off, a nasty high-speed low-side where he was fortunate to escape injury.
As Marc Marquez saw it, the race was already done in those five corners between losing the lead and losing the front of his GP26 machine.
“Just a mistake … but on those first laps I was trying to control everything because I knew Alex was faster than everybody this weekend in dry conditions,” he said.
As with most things in Alex Marquez’s MotoGP career, the sheer weight of achievements earned by his big brother cast a large shadow again on Sunday.
Last year at Jerez when Alex won, Marc crashed out on lap three before rejoining. This year, he was down a lap earlier and wasn’t able to continue. But these aren’t two Grands Prix wins that come with asterisks. Alex was ahead on both occasions where his more celebrated sibling slid out.
Jerez – along with Catalunya and Sepang in Malaysia – have long been Alex Marquez circuits to shine even before his three-win, 12-podium breakout campaign last year. The difference last year was that his list of successful circuits swelled as he piloted the user-friendly Ducati GP24 – the most effective Ducati model of the past three years – to a season few would have expected possible for a rider so deep into his 20s and a MotoGP career that began at Honda in 2020.
After how 2026 had gone before Jerez, it was little wonder Marquez was a little lost for a reasonable explanation on Sunday afternoon.
“What happened … I don’t have the answer,” he eventually laughed.
“From the Friday, I was flying. I don’t know why, honestly … we need to analyse what happened compared to the first three weeks of the beginning of the season.
“I was just thinking of the positive things, just pushing the team and Ducati with the problems and just focusing on the positive things. But, this is really unexpected.
“It’s true that today we were the favourites with the pace, but when we were second on the first lap, I say ‘OK, we have many possibilities, we need to go for it’. I decided to overtake Marc and from that moment try to not make mistakes, and make my pace. The same pace I had in the practice on Friday evening … that was what I did, and I was able to push and have something in the pocket if necessary.
“I knew I needed to overtake Marco [Bezzecchi] fast because later would be really, really difficult. The team showed me on the pit board ‘Marc out’, and it was important for me to know because he was one of the riders who had the pace [in race simulations] on Friday.”
With a one-day in-season test scheduled for Monday at Jerez, celebrations would have to be short and sweet for Marquez. Yes, Ducati snapped Aprilia’s run of five successive wins – all from Bezzecchi since last year’s penultimate round in Portugal – but Bezzecchi still managed to win from losing, extending his championship lead to 11 points over teammate Jorge Martin, with Marc Marquez’s title defence becoming a steeper task after he fell 44 points – more than the 37 available for one perfect Grand Prix weekend – adrift.
Ducati still has work to do, but that was a job for Monday and beyond. For now, Alex Marquez was determined to enjoy a rare chance to relive a special career success a year later.
“This weekend, it felt really similar to last year,” he said of the feeling on the bike.
“It’s important to understand in [the coming races] at Le Mans, Montmelo [Catalunya], Mugello if the step we did here is real, or just one weekend. I think Aprilia is still half a step in front of us, and we need to find something to be a little bit better.
“But this weekend … I think it’s something magic, Jerez. There’s no words to describe it.”
Marc Marquez led younger brother Alex on lap one at Jerez, but the story of the race was to immediately change … (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)Source: AFP
AGIUS TICKS BIG BOX TO MOVE CLOSER TO MOTO2 LEAD
Australia’s Senna Agius did wonders for his quest to move to MotoGP for the first season of the sport’s 850cc regulation revolution set for 2027, the Sydney 20-year-old winning the Moto2 race at Jerez on Sunday to advance to second in the intermediate-class championship.
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Agius, who won the previous Moto2 race at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas, was part of a three-bike breakaway in the 21-lap race with Liqui Moly Dynavolt Intact GP teammate Manual Gonzalez (Spain) and first-time Moto2 polesitter Collin Veijer (Netherlands), and wrested control of the race on lap 14 after scrapping with Veijer in the early stages, taking the lead for good with eight laps remaining and never giving his rivals a look-in, crossing the line eight-tenths of a second ahead of Gonzalez.
Agius became the first Australian Moto2 rider to win successive Grands Prix since Remy Gardner won back-to-back races in Catalunya and Germany in 2021, and moved to within 9.5 points of series leader Gonzalez with his fourth victory in the past year, his maiden win in the category coming in last year’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone in May.
Agius – who hasn’t finished on the podium other than his victories over the past year – ticked an important box in his progression by immediately backing up one good result with another, displaying the consistency that will endear him to MotoGP manufacturers as the rider market takes shape for 2027.
“This is stuff that I dreamed of as a kid,” Agius beamed.
“Hours and hours of work, training, coming to Europe, starting in the back, getting an opportunity with Intact to now back-to-back victories … that’s what dreams are made of.
“I didn’t have it all my own way, I was feeling super good at the beginning [of the race] and when I got to the front, I had an almighty save at turn 11 and I was struggling on the back straight, so with all my progress I couldn’t pass as early as I wanted to.
“I saw my opportunity when I saw Collin kind of struggling. We were so strong this weekend on the brakes as you could see into turn eight, there was nobody that could beat me there.”
Agius, whose name has been linked with both Yamaha and the Tech3 team owned by former F1 team boss Guenther Steiner that currently runs KTM machinery but has been discussed as a potential third Honda team for 2027, immediately understood the significance of the result.
“I was on a mission today,” he said.
“This one means a lot more than most people understand right now. It’s an important time for me, but first of all we need to enjoy this moment, and understand where we are so we can fight for this world championship.”
Agius made it consecutive wins for the first time in his Moto2 career on Sunday. (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)Source: AFP
BRAKE FAILURE SEES MILLER’S POINTS DROUGHT CONTINUE
Jack Miller’s slim chance of opening his 2026 points account evaporated after his Yamaha’s rear brakes stopped working halfway through Sunday’s 25-lap race, Miller finishing in 18th place and 37.577 seconds behind race-winner Alex Marquez at Jerez.
The Pramac Yamaha rider, who endured a miserable Saturday in Spain when he qualified second-last on the 23-bike grid after crashing in qualifying before crashing in the rain in the sprint race as a top-10 finish beckoned, made moderate progress in Sunday’s Grand Prix after a first-lap error before his brakes turned the second half of the race into a “f***ing nightmare” at several corners of the 13-turn track.
“It was one of those weekends for us,” Miller said.
“The race honestly felt OK. I got away to a decent start, but I made a mistake in the last corner of the first lap, I’d been really strong there all weekend but the closing speed was too much.
“I’d just cleared [Honda’s] Diogo [Moreira, on lap 13] and had two clear quite fast laps, and then I lost the rear brake – I thought I’d boiled it, the pump was just going to the bottom.
“After we entered the [pit] box [following the race], we understood the sensor broke and all the oil pissed out the front of it, so I had no rear brake for the last 12 laps.
“As sh**ty as it was, it was a learning thing for me … turn two was a f***ing nightmare, turn six was a nightmare, same with the last corner. Our engine brake strategy is not the best, and we rely a lot on the rear brake pressure for the engine brake, so the bike was over the front … I was trying to gather it and understand how to ride again without the rear brake.”
A rear brake issue in Sunday’s race put the full stop on a frustrating weekend of what-ifs for Miller. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
Miller’s run of four consecutive scoreless Grand Prix weekends is his longest since rounds 4-7 in 2024 when he was with KTM, and he remains one of just two full-time riders – KTM’s Maverick Vinales, absent from Jerez with injury, is the other – yet to get off the mark this season.
Yamaha’s struggles to keep up with MotoGP’s midfield in the nascent stages of its V4 engine project were laid bare at Jerez when 2021 world champion Fabio Quartararo, who qualified on pole and finished second to Alex Marquez in Spain a year ago, was the best-placed finisher of the five Yamaha bikes in 14th place, 29.532secs behind the race-winner.
The other four Yamahas – Alex Rins (16th), Miller, his teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu (19th) and wildcard Augusto Fernandez (20th) – were four of the final five classified finishers.
“There are so many areas where we have problems,” a frustrated Quartararo said.
“Even if we solve one, another one pops up. I’m not stupid, I know how to ride and how much we’re losing … it’s plain to see. A year ago I was on the podium, today I’m 30 seconds behind.”