An arduous, improbable, anguish-ridden return to the top is a sporting triumph that requires the ideal setting for a storybook ending. And for Marc Marquez, the chance to wrap up his seventh MotoGP title this weekend in Japan is just that.
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By now, we’re all familiar with Marquez’s redemption tale.
World champion four years running from 2016-19 after winning as a 20-year-old rookie in 2013, then again as a sophomore a year later. Wrecked by injury and four right arm surgeries from 2020-22. Plagued by self-doubt and then frustration before a realisation in 2023. And now, two years after informing Honda he wanted to be let out of his 2024 contract following the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, a chance to complete a redemptive arc at a circuit that has been the backdrop for so many of his signature moments.
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Marquez has circuits where he’s enjoyed much more success than Motegi – just three of his 73 premier-class wins have come there – but Japan was where he wrapped up his 2014, 2016 and 2018 world titles. His 2019 championship – the most recent – was sealed in Thailand with four rounds remaining. This year’s masterclass – 14 wins in 16 sprints, 11 in 16 Grands Prix – means the championship could in the bag with five rounds left after Japan.
It’s an unprecedented season for one of the sport’s great champions, let alone one who has come back from the physical brink like Marquez has, and one who – as he admitted in the lead-in to Motegi – would have walked away had his decision to leave Honda and move to a second-string Ducati to ride for free last year hadn’t worked out.
The maths are simple. Marquez leads his nearest title ‘rival’ – quotation marks necessary – Alex Marquez by 182 points heading into Motegi.
Should he be 185 points to the good come Sunday night, title number seven will be his 12 years after his first and six years after his most recent, the latter setting a record between championships for any rider in MotoGP/500cc Grand Prix history; Casey Stoner’s four years between titles (2007 for Ducati, 2011 for Honda) has been the benchmark for the past 14 years.
It would have been a better story for social media fodder and internet angst had Marquez won the title at Misano last time out in the backyard of bitter rival Valentino Rossi; Marquez had his 2017 Leo Messi/Bernabeu moment in response to the haters after beating Rossi protégé Marco Bezzecchi in the San Marino Grand Prix after crashing out of the lead of the sprint 24 hours earlier.
The trolling – winning a title for Ducati, who Rossi never won a race with, at Rossi’s home track, equalling Rossi’s seven MotoGP titles – would have been next-level. But winning it in Japan feels more right for a career where a lot went wrong after its first seven years of almost unbroken success, and one that – belatedly – shows no sign of slowing down.
It’s undeniable that Marquez’s match point is the dominant storyline of this weekend; here’s the rest of your Insider’s Guide to round 17 of the MotoGP season, with the 24-lap Japanese Grand Prix set for 3pm AEST on Sunday after the 12-lap sprint race at 4pm Saturday AEST.
MARQUEZ KEEN TO ‘CLOSE THE CIRCLE’
Marquez has closed out three of his previous six MotoGP titles with victories, wins in 2016 and 2018 in Japan seeing him celebrate the championship from the top step of the Motegi podium.
While he’s doing his best to treat the weekend as any other – a logical position to take given he’s won 25 of the 32 starts across both race formats in 2025 – what matters most is that he wins the title, not necessarily where that comes.
“I’m facing the race weekend as a normal race weekend, but of course everybody is asking … the body can feel that there’s something big that can happen,” Marquez, who is chasing his 100th world championship win across all three classes, said.
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“Let’s see if we can celebrate something big on Sunday – but if not … don’t worry, I can wait. If it’s not this weekend, it’s not a disaster … [but] the most important is to achieve it sooner than later.
“I need to score three more points than Alex, he’s second in the championship and he’s very fast, and it will be not easy. The most important is to keep a normal mentality and try to do our best. If it’s not here, we will have another chance [next weekend] in Indonesia.”
Marquez needs to outscore his younger sibling by at least three points to seal the deal; he’s managed that in 12 of the 16 rounds to date, with only Austin (where he crashed from the lead in the Grand Prix), Jerez (where he fell early in the Grand Prix while Alex took his maiden MotoGP win) and last time out in Misano (where he won the Grand Prix after crashing out of the sprint, his 25 points for the weekend equalling Alex’s tally) the only three rounds where he’s failed to outscore his brother all season.
Asked on Thursday how his imminent 2025 title stacks up against those that came before it, Marquez reflected on his road back from the brink after 2020, while acknowledging his first MotoGP championship as a 20-year-old rookie for Honda 12 years ago.
“The value of a title is the value of a title, it’s the same … maybe 2013 was the most important one,” he said.
“But it’s true that [2025] will be the title where I pass the most difficult time of my career, the biggest challenge of my career, [so] the value inside of me is a lot.
“This last five years has been super difficult. Some people can think – even me – that I lost two to three years of my career as a rider because I was home more than here at the circuits, but it’s true that on my personal life, I learned a lot of things.
“The personal life is much longer than the professional life. This, I like … I don’t like to repeat that experience, but I do like that I learned many things.
“Right now, it’s my second life in MotoGP. We can close that circle in the best way possible.”
‘BRINGS OUT MY STRENGTHS’: MILLER RETURNS TO SCENE OF MOST RECENT WIN
Riding in a Japanese Grand Prix for a Japanese manufacturer for the first time since his Honda days in 2017 means Jack Miller’s build-up to Motegi has been busier than usual.
On Wednesday alone, the Australian visited the Yamaha Motor Company’s headquarters in Iwata with fellow Yamaha riders Fabio Quartararo, Alex Rins and Miguel Oliveira before an event three hours away in Tokyo with many of his MotoGP rivals on Wednesday evening.
The most recent of the 30-year-old’s four MotoGP victories came at Motegi in 2022 for Ducati, where he came through from seventh on the grid to take the lead on lap three and bolt to a 3.4-second victory, undoubtedly his finest in the premier class.
Miller, who finished second for Yamaha in the prestigious Suzuka 8-Hour event in Japan in August, is relishing the chance to race at a hard-braking track where he’s also taken two front-row starts, the most recent of which came for KTM in 2023, and where the fervent local fans will treat all 23 riders – Honda has entered local rider Takaaki Nakagami as a wildcard this weekend – as heroes.
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“You love everything about the Japanese GP,” he said on Thursday.
“Can’t wait to start riding on a track I absolutely love that really brings out my strengths … it’s obviously a very important race for Yamaha, but also for me since this is where I took my last victory.
“She’s a pretty busy weekend, yesterday was very busy all over the country, but it’s good. I love the enthusiasm from the fans and the input from the manufacturers. Very appreciative of everything they’ve done for motorcycle racing throughout the years, and I feel very privileged to be a part of it.”
Miller said on Thursday that Yamaha will use several items this weekend that it trialled in the post-Misano test following the San Marino Grand Prix – “just small things that you wouldn’t think make a difference, but they make a difference” – and while plenty of resource is being poured into the still-developing V4-engined bike that was raced by test rider Augusto Fernandez at Misano, Yamaha is still prioritising working on the YZR-M1’s electronics in an attempt to bridge the gap to Ducati up front, and be more competitive with Aprilia, KTM and Honda.
“We are always trying to improve the electronics, the guys in the factory are trying to extract as much power as we can possibly get out of this package, but in terms of creating things to try, we’ve already used our aero updates for the year,” he explained.
“It just takes time. It takes time to write the [electronics] programs, time to create the tools … none of this stuff is copy and paste or you buy an application from the app store … it’s all built by them.
“This s**t takes time. It’s well above my pay grade, but when it comes to this kind of thing you need to be patient. We are getting there and the programs are getting a lot better. If you could close the gap tomorrow, we’d try to do it tomorrow.”
MARTIN’S REMEDY FOR DOUBTS AFTER INJURY-RAVAGED SEASON
Reigning world champion Jorge Martin has credited his work with a psychologist to get him back on a track after a nightmare opening to his title defence this season, which included three separate injuries that saw him race in just one of the season’s first 11 rounds.
The Spaniard, who moved to Aprilia from Ducati in the off-season, was embroiled in a protracted ugly contract spat with Aprilia while he was sidelined, attempting to use a performance clause in his contract to leave halfway through a two-year deal before relenting and returning for the Czech Grand Prix in July.
While Martin has shown flashes of his best – he stormed from 16th on the grid to fourth place in the Hungarian Grand Prix in August – the remainder of 2025 is all about setting himself up for next season, the 27-year-old sitting in 20th place in the world championship with just 34 points ahead of this weekend in Japan.
In an interview with es.motorsport.com, Martin said the most severe of his accidents – when he fell in the Qatar Grand Prix and was collected by Fabio Di Giannantonio’s Ducati, suffering 11 fractured ribs and a collapsed lung – made him question if he could find the speed to be competitive again, and saw him seek solace in a psychologist to help with his return.
“I didn’t consider whether to retire or not, what I had were doubts about whether I’d be able to ride a bike again,” Martin said.
“It wasn’t about whether I was going to retire or not, it was about whether I could be fast again. At that moment many doubts arise in your head, it’s a time of a lot of frustration and weakness.
“Most riders who use a psychologist maybe have a taboo about not wanting to say it, or think it’s a sign of weakness, but for me it’s the opposite. It’s a sign of strength, of wanting to improve also on a mental level. I’ve hired him as part of my team. I consider the psychologist like another mechanic, like a trainer.
“He warned me that the challenge ahead was the hardest thing I would ever go through in my life … that I wasn’t going to come back and win. That I was coming from winning and now I’d be 18th, and that’s not easy. He helped prepare me for it … it didn’t hit me out of the blue.
“Maybe if I hadn’t been prepared for it, I would have given up. Now it’s the opposite … being 18th in a practice makes me bring out the best in myself.”
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