It’s not every day you choose to wander out onto a MotoGP podium in your underwear, but Marc Marquez had cooked up a celebration the night before if he managed to win the San Marino Grand Prix, and decided it was time to deploy it.
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More accurately, it was a celebration that made a point, one action that had multiple meanings.
A day after he’d crashed out of the Misano sprint race – much to the delight of a section of the crowd at the circuit in Valentino Rossi’s backyard who can neither forgive nor forget Marquez’s role in Rossi not winning the title 10 years ago – the Spaniard won on ‘away’ turf on Sunday for the 11th victory of what has become the most prolific points-scoring season in MotoGP history.
Time, then, for something familiar, but unusual.
Marquez left his race boots in the post-race pre-podium cool-down room and ventured out onto the podium displaying his red Ducati race suit to the crowd, reprising Leo Messi’s 2017 celebration after the football superstar’s last-minute goal saw Barcelona defeat Real Madrid in enemy territory at the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid.
It could have also been interpreted as an acknowledgment that Marquez had won both races for Ducati this year in Italy – at Mugello, where he broke an 11-year drought in June, and on Sunday at Misano.
The crowd was more subdued than it had been a day earlier, and Marquez allowed people to make up their own minds as to what his temporary state of undress really meant.
“I felt the pressure this weekend to win the Italian GPs in Mugello and here, so I’m happy for it,” he said.
“Messi was talking playing football, I do the talking riding bikes. It’s the best way. I feel like it was time to celebrate …”.
Marquez and celebrating have gone hand in hand in 2025. Sunday’s Grand Prix win was his 11th in 16 Grand Prix starts; only his 2014 season (13 wins from 18 Grands Prix) and 2019 (12 from 19) compare, numerically.
Of the 16 sprints this year, Marquez has won 14 of them. With 512 points, he’s surpassed Jorge Martin’s 2024 tally for the most points scored in a single season (508), and there’s still six rounds to run.
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It means Marquez can win the title next time out in Japan – where he secured his 2014, 2016 and 2018 titles, all with Honda – if he scores three more points than fellow Ducati rider and younger sibling Alex Marquez at Motegi.
It’s not something he wants to talk too much about yet, despite the poignancy of securing the seventh premier-class championship that has eluded him for six years in Honda’s backyard after he reluctantly left the Japanese brand for Ducati in 2023. Winning the championship full stop is more important than where it happens.
“It doesn’t matter if we celebrate in Japan or Indonesia,” he reasoned, before trying to put into words how it feels to be so close to completing one of world’s sport’s most impressive comeback stories.
“It’s amazing, something amazing … still unreal. But, I don’t want to lose the concentration, I just want to keep the same level.
“It’s true that it looks like it’s a matter of time and we will achieve our main goal, but be calm … I want to keep pushing and finish the season in the best way possible.”
‘SPECIAL FIRE’ DRIVES MARQUEZ TO VICTORY
Marquez hasn’t been pushed particularly often this season when he’s won, but it’s Marco Bezzecchi who has done the pushing when he’s encountered unusual resistance.
Six rounds ago at the Dutch Grand Prix in June, Bezzecchi sat glued to Marquez’s rear wheel for 26 laps of the Assen circuit waiting for a mistake that never came, Marquez having just enough in reserve to eke out a win by six-tenths of a second.
On Sunday at Misano, the roles were reversed, Bezzecchi clearing off from pole position on his Aprilia as Marquez – from fourth on the grid – was the only rider capable of going with him, the rest of the field left in their wake.
For lap after lap, Marquez shadowed Bezzecchi as the race-day crowd of 91,000-plus roared, their home hero repelling the world champion-elect a day after Bezzecchi had profited from Marquez’s profligacy to win his first sprint race in over two years.
Finally, 12 laps into the 27-lap race, Bezzecchi out-braked himself into Misano’s Turn 8 and Marquez sprung into the lead, which usually means game over for the rest.
Bezzecchi hung tough, though, and the sight of Marquez laying on the floor of the pre-podium cool-down room – before his red leathers were removed as he made his podium point – showed how taxing the final laps had been.
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“It was one of the toughest [races] of the season, together with Assen where Marco was pushing me,” Marquez admitted.
“Marco was a super-tough opponent, congrats to him because even being faster than ever in the final laps, he was replying in a very good way. Both of us were pushing more than usual.”
Marquez delivered what looked to be the knockout blow with the fastest lap of the race – a 1min 31.290sec effort – with three laps to go, only for Bezzecchi to set his best lap of the race, one that was just 0.021secs slower – on the penultimate lap. The margin at the end was just 0.568secs, but Marquez had instantly redeemed himself for his first sprint race mistake of the season a day earlier.
“Today I had a special fire inside of me,” he said.
“After yesterday’s mistake, always I try to reply in the best way possible, and the best reply was to try to win the race.”
“The heart rate was super high the last few laps. In the last laps, I put all my cards on the table, but the reply from Marco was amazing.”
BEZZECCHI EYES TOP THREE AFTER NEAR-PERFECT WEEKEND
As a rider who grew up as part of Rossi’s rider academy in nearby Tavullia, Bezzecchi was never likely to be particularly friendly towards Marquez, and their relationship has been slightly strained since the Italian joined the premier-class field in 2022.
Their recent on-track battles have become more frequent since Bezzecchi’s first season for Aprilia began to gather momentum when he won the British Grand Prix in late May, and Bezzecchi has scored more points than any rider besides Marquez in the past nine rounds, meaning they’re seeing one another on track more regularly as they scrap for more meaningful prizes.
“It’s normal when you fight to have some tough moments, and also I think I was more immature in the past compared to now,” Bezzecchi said of his relationship with Marquez.
“It was difficult … right now, for me it’s good. Marc is of course a rival so we are not best friends, but it’s like this between all the MotoGP riders. We have a good relationship in terms of respect to each other, and on track we can do good races.”
While Bezzecchi wasn’t about to rate Sunday’s race at Misano as better than his Silverstone victory, the fact he took pole, won the sprint and came within six-tenths of a second of winning the Grand Prix against an all-time great gave him food for thought.
“The win obviously has a different taste, but in terms of overall performance and the mood of the weekend, it’s one of the best,” he said.
“Not the best, because when you win it’s much better, but one of the best. It was a tough race, but it was also really beautiful. I gave my all, I wanted the victory so bad, and I believed a lot. But I really can’t complain at all because I gave everything I had, and for the fans it was cool.
“I knew that Marc wasn’t going to give me a chance. I had to take this chance by myself, but it wasn’t enough. But I’m happy, because we were completely on the limit.”
Bezzecchi now has 229 points for the season, just eight points behind Marquez’s teammate Francesco Bagnaia, who endured another weekend to forget at a track where he’s won on two previous occasions in 2021 and 2022.
Bagnaia qualified eighth, but sunk to a pointless 13th in the sprint race and crashed out on lap nine of Sunday’s Grand Prix, and has scored just 24 points over the past three rounds to lose his grip on third place in the championship standings.
MILLER’S COSTLY U-TURN AFTER COMEBACK
Australia’s Jack Miller finished a fraught San Marino Grand Prix weekend with a second comeback ride in two days, four points for a 12th-place finish and with a hole in his wallet after a bizarre post-race goodwill gesture went awry.
A crash in final practice just before qualifying on Saturday saw the 30-year-old have to use his spare Yamaha in Q1, and he finished 21st in the 23-bike field for his worst grid position of 2025.
Miller recovered to 14th place in Saturday’s sprint, and advanced to 12th on Sunday after showing strong pace in the middle stages of the race, and benefiting from seven riders crashing out in tricky, windy conditions, Bagnaia and last year’s Misano winner Enea Bastianini (KTM) two of the highest-profile fallers.
“It was a relatively decent day considering where we started and where we finished,” Miller said.
“I felt pretty confident, pretty good on the bike between lap eight to probably six laps to go, the bike was in a sweet spot. But once we got to the latter stages of the race on the light fuel tank [the bike] was almost a little bit too stiff, I struggled a lot with bump absorption and it was hard to get the bike to pitch and transfer.
“The pace was there or thereabouts [but] it was very hard the last five laps, on the last lap I hit the kerb pretty hard at Turn 11-12 and the f**king thing started shaking, and I didn’t even bother continuing to try to accelerate, I just rolled out of it.”
After the race, Miller was fined 2000 Euros (A$3569) after he’d stopped to give a trackside fan his gloves as a memento, but temporarily rode back onto the circuit in the opposite direction to the rest of the field as they completed their in-laps back to the pits.
Miller had noticed the fan had a sign for him in the pre-race riders parade on Sunday morning, and remembered to stop after the race.
“I saw this morning there was a fan with a sign saying ‘give us your gloves and I’ll give you a beer’,” Miller explained.
“I pulled up and I overshot him a little bit, so I went about 30 metres back up the road and to do a U-turn I went back on the track, and thought there was nobody coming so I could give the fan the gloves.
“I was happy to oblige and give them a set of gloves and it was a very nice moment … and then I got the 2000 Euro fine. And I didn’t get the beer …”.
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