After 12 MotoGP seasons, six world championships and 61 previous Grand Prix victories, there’s not too many things Marc Marquez hasn’t seen or done in the world championship.
But when something unforeseen comes up, there was always going to be a chance the sport’s foremost improviser would master it better than any of his peers.
This year, his first season with Ducati after a decade with Honda, has only enhanced that reputation as the rider who sees variables his rivals would categorise as obstacles and overcome them through a combination of skill and force of will, wins on a slippery track in Aragon and in the drizzle at Misano cases in point.
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Sunday at Phillip Island, though, was something else.
Marquez makes a habit of never removing helmet visor tear-offs while on the grid, lest they end up somewhere he doesn’t want them. In his bike’s airbox to send temperatures sky-high, flapping around in his line of sight, getting stuck to his leathers as a paper-thin distraction.
But when his visor was, unusually, filthy when he lined up on the front row for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, Marquez did what anyone else would, instinctively ripping the thin layer of plastic off to give himself a better view, and toss it away. To his horror, the trackside wind – which had picked up just before race start as the clouds gathered – blew it straight under his bike and in front of his rear tyre. It was a one in a million occurrence, and one Marquez realised he could do nothing about as the lights illuminated before releasing the field. He knew what was coming.
Marquez spun his rear wheel on the discarded plastic strip as he engaged the throttle and initially went nowhere as smoke billowed from the rear of his Ducati, his rivals darting left and right to avoid him as he belatedly got up to speed.
By his count – and he wasn’t even sure – he was 13th by the first corner. There were 26 laps and 11 turns to go, but all seemed lost. For the second day in a row, after he’d run wide at the first turn in Saturday’s sprint as pole-sitter Jorge Martin braked heavily in front of him, he had a lot of work to do.
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Fortunately for Marquez, that work was at Phillip Island – one of five circuits on the calendar that runs in his preferred anticlockwise direction. Stung into action and with little thought of the consequences of pulverising his Michelin rear tyre too early in the race, Marquez took off.
By the end of lap one, he was eighth; by lap six, he was back to third. On lap seven, he broke the circuit’s fastest race lap record that he stood since he set it as a rookie in 2013. Two laps later, a lap of 1:27.765 was two-tenths of a second faster again.
By lap 12, Marquez was second, reigning world champion Francesco Bagnaia behind him, Bagnaia’s chief title rival Martin ahead. With 15 laps left to run, it was time to hurry up, but wait.
The inevitable came with four laps left, Marquez passing Martin for the lead. The younger Spaniard gave as good as he got, repassing Marquez at the first corner with three laps left, but when Marquez dive-bombed him and cleared off four turns later, Martin was done – and had a championship to think about.
Four minutes later, Marquez had a fourth MotoGP victory at Phillip Island, while Martin had a four-point extension of his championship lead over Bagnaia, who trailed home 10 seconds behind in third place. But the story, as it so often is at the Island, was Marquez.
Disqualified on his first MotoGP visit here in 2013, he won in 2015, 2017 and 2019 – and crashed from the lead in 2014 and 2016. In 2022, after four arm surgeries that threatened to derail his career after he violently crashed out of the 2020 season-opener at Jerez, Marquez took his 100th podium at Phillip Island.
“Something always happens here,” Marquez grinned as he paused to contemplate just how, this time, he’d found a new avenue to victory.
“As we know here in Australia, some of the insects are super big. When I was putting the front [ride-height] device, one insect was super big and I was looking at the lights, and it was not clear. I was thinking ‘I will arrive at the first corner and I will not have time to remove’ [the dirty visor tear-off] … and then the wind … I was thinking it was super unlucky, it cannot be like this’.
“When I was in the first corner I see [Honda’s Luca] Marini and some Yamahas so I think ‘I don’t know where I am, but I am far’. So then I decide to use the tyre … here you normally have to save the tyre, but I decided ‘let’s see what we can do’.
“Second was my target … but when I saw Martin was there, I start to realise about the victory. When I was behind Martin I was super comfortable, riding in an easy way. I was smooth, managing always the distance and I was waiting.
“In the last laps, I tried to attack. It went well.”
No matter where Marquez’s “second career” ends up after his move to become Bagnaia’s factory Ducati teammate from next season, it’s safe to say that MotoGP win number 62 will live long in the memory because of how he earned it.
And next time, he’ll check the wind before disposing of any dirty helmet visor tear-off, lest he throw the equivalent of a banana skin in his own path again.
MARTIN WINS FROM LOSING
Sunday was a familiar Phillip Island feeling for Martin, who left Australia without a win yet again after earning pole position for a third consecutive season.
But when he widened his lens, the Spaniard had plenty of positives to take from his first Australian Grand Prix podium, having doubled his championship advantage over Bagnaia to 20 points, and with one fewer event for the reigning world champion to close down that gap.
Martin had Bagnaia’s measure all weekend in Australia, taking pole as Bagnaia qualified fifth, his worst grid spot for 11 races. First in the sprint race to the Italian’s fourth, and second to Bagnaia’s third on Sunday saw his advantage swell to, more or less, the 21 points he had in his pocket two rounds ago when he won the Indonesian Grand Prix.
“It was a great weekend, doing the pole position, winning yesterday and today on the podium … but I wanted to win and I tried my best,” Martin said.
“But the feeling wasn’t like yesterday [in the sprint], and I was trying to put the power on the ground and I was slipping a lot on the rear.
“At the end, I tried to be close to Marc but he had nothing to lose so it was much more difficult on my side to battle. He had something extra in corner four, and I knew he had something else … maybe not in terms of speed, but the risks he can take. So second position is OK … all the chances I can extend the lead, I will take it.”
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While Bagnaia wasn’t able to continue his step-by-step ascension in Australia – fourth in 2019, he was third in 2022 when racing resumed at Phillip Island after a two-year pandemic pause and second last year – third on a weekend where he conceded he didn’t have anything for Martin’s pace was a good save.
“We managed to improve from yesterday, yesterday was surely more tough,” he said of his sprint race result.
“Today I was feeling much better in warm-up and we improved the setting and I was happy, but in the race I finished the front tyre and I was struggling to follow [Martin and Marquez]. I had to slow down, and the margin to the guys behind was huge. More than this was tough, because they did a better job than us.”
Compared to last year when Martin didn’t lead the championship after a single round despite the fight with Bagnaia going all the way to the season finale in Valencia, Bagnaia has led the standings after just three of 17 rounds this year, losing the lead after the Aragon GP in September when a controversial clash with Alex Marquez as the pair fought over third place saw him lose his most recent advantage.
“We are continuing recovering, losing, recovering, losing … our performances are very balanced, and unfortunately the contact with Alex Marquez is weighing more on the championship,” he said.
“We have to focus and move on to the next ones at tracks where I know I am very fast. Buriram [in Thailand next weekend] and Malaysia are two tracks that better suit my riding style, so I think I can be stronger. We were knowing arriving at this track that the chances to lose points was high.”
MILLER RECOVERS FROM LAST TO 11TH
Jack Miller had hoped for a more routine day and a chance to move forward after his build-up to Sunday’s race became an exercise in extremes, but his home Grand Prix ended in a muted 11th place after being shoved off circuit by Alex Marquez’s Ducati at the first turn.
The Australian fell in Friday practice to miss Q2, hit a hare that ran across the track in Saturday qualifying and started 16th for his worst grid spot in a MotoGP race at home, and then carried a seagull that smashed into the front fairing of his KTM on the first lap with him in the 13-lap sprint race as he advanced to eighth place before crashing out.
Sunday’s race was one of scrounging whatever points he could after Marquez, who started eighth, tried to recover places lost from a tardy getaway and ran Miller into the run-off area on the inside of turn one as the field filed through, dropping the pair to the back of the pack.
Asked about his recovery to 11th place from 21st in the first sector of the race, Miller’s press briefing – all 64 seconds of it – was part laughter, part lament.
“You didn’t miss much … no wildlife today, so I’m happy,” he said.
“I got a mega start, and then Alex Marquez decided he wanted to turn in on me and I was dead last at turn two.
“I fought my way back and I was trying to chase [Aprilia’s] Raul [Fernandez] and that group down, but I was giving it a bit too much on the front end and with about three laps to go, the front went and you have to start relying on the rear to bring the bike around, and I let [Yamaha’s] Fabio [Quartararo] slip by.
“I was pushing to try to battle with those boys, but I couldn’t do much more, honestly. The pace was decent and I was able to reel some blokes up and pass them, but it would have been nice to have gotten that start.”
Miller finished 19.932 secs behind race-winner Marc Marquez, four places and four seconds behind teammate Brad Binder, the best of the KTM’s on a weekend where Ducati riders took six of the top seven spots in the sprint race, and the top six places in the Grand Prix as the Italian marque won for the 14th consecutive Grand Prix.
SYDNEY TEENAGER GETS HOME BREAKTHROUGH
Australia had a home rider take their maiden world championship podium at Phillip Island for a second straight year on Sunday, with Sydney teenager Senna Agius finishing third in the intermediate-class Moto2 category after storming through from 13th on the grid.
The 19-year-old, sporting a Casey Stoner-themed one-off replica helmet design for his maiden Australian Grand Prix, finished 7.228 secs behind race-winner and 2025 MotoGP rider Fermin Aldeguer, who pipped Spanish compatriot Aron Canet by 0.194 secs in a thrilling dash to the line after another Spaniard, Alonso Lopez, crashed from third with three laps remaining.
“I’ve got no words,” Agius, whose previous best result of his rookie season came with fifth in Catalunya in May, said.
“In that race I felt so good, but I was finding myself being a bit out of control because I was so excited out there. At the end when I put my pace I was catching Alonso, I didn’t want to catch him too quick because I knew if I used the tyre I had nothing else … when I saw him go down, that was the longest three laps of my life.”
Agius is the first Australian to finish on a Moto2 podium in almost three years, Remy Gardner winning in Portugal in November 2021 as part of his world championship-winning season.
Of the other three Australians in the MotoGP feeder classes, Darwin’s Joel Kelso – who was third in Moto3 last season at Phillip Island – briefly led the lightweight-class race before finishing 11th, while Wollongong rookie Jacob Roulstone was 13th. Queensland’s Moto2 fill-in rider Harrison Voight finished in 18th place on his world championship debut.
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