There are myriad ways to end droughts in sport. In MotoGP 2025, Marc Marquez’s way is to douse them with a fire hose.
In his first year with Ducati’s factory team, Marquez has stopped 11 years of failure in Qatar, and a barren run of the same duration at Mugello in Italy. A seven-year run of outs at Assen in the Netherlands was ended, too.
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But Austria was the big one. Remarkably, Marquez had never won at the Red Bull Ring in eight previous attempts, beaten by Ducati riders in last-lap thrillers three years in a row from 2017-19, and coming nowhere close since.
The key word? ‘Had’.
Sunday’s success in Spielberg, Marquez’s sixth consecutive weekend where he’s won both the sprint and Grand Prix, meant more than just another perfect score of 37 points. It finally got a monkey off his back at a track that had inexplicably tripped him up more than once, and produced a suite of statistics that underline just how dominant his 2025 season is becoming.
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With his win in Saturday’s sprint race – his 12th in 13 sprints held so far this season – Marquez took his season points tally to 392, equal to what he’d scored in his entire 20-round 2024 campaign.
By upping that number to 418 points with his ninth Grand Prix win in 13 starts this season, Marquez has eliminated all but nine other riders from mathematical championship contention with nine rounds remaining. In 26 starts across sprints and Grands Prix, he’s only been beaten five times.
In winning six consecutive Grands Prix for the first time since 2014 – when he won the first 10 races of his 2013 rookie championship defence – Marquez finally put to rest the incessant questions about why, for years, the Red Bull Ring had been his nemesis.
“I lose three years in a row against the red bike and now I’m riding the red bike, so no excuses,” he laughed.
This win, though, was more hard-fought than the record books will show. For the first 20 laps, Marquez had to deal with an inspired Marco Bezzecchi, the Italian making light of Aprilia’s typically underwhelming form at the unusual stop-go Spielberg circuit where one long straight leads into another slow corner for the majority of the 10-turn lap.
Once Bezzecchi had finally been dispatched, Ducati rookie Fermin Aldeguer was roaring through the pack as the fastest rider on track, his pace so surprising that it initially caught Marquez off-guard.
“I was all the race behind Marco, and I understand that I was using too much the rear tyre,” he said.
“I couldn’t brake as I wanted and I was using more the rear tyre on the [corner] exit so for that reason in the middle of the race, I just give up a bit, breathe, cool down the front tyre and then attack again in the last laps. I didn’t expect an outsider [Aldeguer] to arrive from nowhere with amazing pace. But the last three laps, I was pushing to keep the distance.”
Marquez winning at tracks where he’s made a habit of it – like Aragon and the Sachsenring in his increasing streak – isn’t news. Winning where he’s not managed to for some time – or, in Austria’s case, at all – makes future success feel inevitable.
With a 142-point championship lead, Marquez doesn’t care where he wins the title, just as long as he does. If the streak ends, it ends. It’s a means to a long-awaited end.
“[I am] understanding and accepting when some Saturday or Sunday, I will not be the fastest out there,” he said.
“Because we are coming with a very good inertia, people expect I will win everything, but it’s MotoGP, it’s not like this. We need to be realistic. It’s true that in some race, we will have more difficulties. But at the moment, we are enjoying.”
ROOKIE SHINES, POLE-SITTER STUBBORN
From where they’d come from across the Austrian race weekend, both Aldeguer and Bezzecchi had every reason to be pleased with their podium performances despite being overtaken for the win in Bezzecchi’s case, or falling 1.118secs short of a massive boilover in Aldeguer’s.
For Aldeguer, who hasn’t managed to beat Gresini Ducati teammate Alex Marquez in qualifying once this season and has endured the usual ups and downs of a debutant, Sunday’s second place topped his podium for third in France in round six, and showcased the late-race turn of pace that is beginning to become his calling card.
Over one lap – Aldeguer has qualified outside of the top 10 six times in 13 rounds – and in the early laps of races, the Spaniard has looked every bit the rookie he is. But his tyre management belies his lack of experience, and from being four seconds from the lead and in fifth place halfway through the 28-lap race, Aldeguer drew to within seven-tenths of Marquez with three laps left before the six-time MotoGP champion upped his pace.
“Today, the race was incredible, it’s one of the races you never dream about,” Aldeguer said.
“I’m always surprised with myself and my pace in the last laps, because I’m the best rider of the Ducatis to manage the rear tyre, we have all the Michelin data. Maybe I am very clean with the throttle … I know that if one rider can battle with Marc in the last laps, maybe it’s myself. But I am a rookie and we have to continue the work, and don’t think about the victory for now. But we are improving very quickly.”
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For Bezzecchi, who was 18th after Friday practice and had to come through Q1 to take his first pole since late in the 2023 season in India, third at a track where Aprilia has traditionally been nowhere was a sign that Aprilia’s recent improvements can translate to all circuit configurations.
“Coming here, [Aprilia CEO] Massimo [Rivola] and all the crew said ‘this is a track where we’ve been struggling since we started, so don’t expect too much’. I didn’t, but I have a hard head and when I want something, I try my all.
“Hopefully we can continue in this way. In the end [Marquez] was really fast, and also Fermin came, he was really strong and he impressed me a lot. The podium was the maximum I could do.”
‘CONTENDERS’ FALL FURTHER BACK AFTER STRUGGLES
While Marquez celebrated yet another success, the two riders closest to him in the championship standings will be pleased to turn the page on Austria as soon as possible, with Alex Marquez (10th) and Francesco Bagnaia (eighth) losing significant chunks of points to the series leader.
Alex Marquez qualified second and finished in the same place in Saturday’s 14-lap sprint, but his Grand Prix unravelled when he served a long-lap penalty he carried into Austria after skittling Honda’s Joan Mir in the previous race in the Czech Republic before the mid-season break.
Fourth and in the podium fight in the early stages, Marquez dropped to 11th when he served his penalty on lap four and could only advance one place higher, finishing 15.537secs behind his older brother in 10th place for his worst Grand Prix finish of the season.
Bagnaia – who came into round 13 unbeaten in Austria since 2022 across two sprints and three Grands Prix – his Red Bull Ring dominance ended in meek fashion after a lurid slide at the start of Saturday’s sprint saw him drop to last place before retiring, and an early-race fight with Marc Marquez fizzled out as he faded to eighth and 12.486secs behind his teammate, coming off second-best in a lap 18 fight with KTM’s Pedro Acosta and Aldeguer that pushed him out of podium contention.
“I don’t know honestly what happened,” Bagnaia said.
“I started well, I started better, but I was slower than the guys in front of me. It’s really strange, my feeling now – it’s also difficult to explain.
“I am not consistent in sessions. In one session I am the fastest with fantastic pace, then I do the race and I am super-slow, and I finish eighth.”
After 13 rounds, Bagnaia is third in the championship with 221 points, 197 behind Marc Marquez, and has won just one race (the Americas Grand Prix after Marquez crashed out of the lead) all season.
MILLER LAST AS YAMAHA’S WEEKEND PLUMBS NEW DEPTHS
Jack Miller’s forgettable Austrian Grand Prix concluded with him running out of fuel on the slow-down lap after the chequered flag on Sunday, a fitting end to a dreadful weekend for the Australian that saw him start and finish last.
Miller – who was fined 1000 Euros (A$1798) for irresponsible riding after he rode his Yamaha back to the pits when it was smoking during Friday afternoon practice – qualified 20th, only ahead of KTM’s Maverick Vinales before the Spaniard withdrew with a shoulder injury, and finished 17th in Saturday’s sprint, ahead of last-placed Pramac Yamaha teammate Miguel Oliveira.
On Sunday, Miller was the final rider over the finish line in 18th place, 37.478secs behind race-winner Marquez as Yamaha’s four riders occupied the final four finishing positions, Fabio Quartararo finishing 15th, the Frenchman’s factory Yamaha teammate Alex Rins 16th, and Oliveira 17th.
The stop-start nature of the Austrian circuit, which penalises the YZR-M1’s lack of straight-line grunt, became a nightmare for all four Yamaha riders, with Miller enduring his worst qualifying since the final race of his 2015 rookie season in Valencia, and all four Yamahas finishing at least 25secs from victory in just 28 laps.
“When there’s four of you and, for example, in qualifying we are all between three-tenths [of a second of one another] and Fabio [Quartararo] is probably one of the best in the world over one lap, it says a lot,” Miller said.
“We are trying everything, all four of us, between four bikes you can try out a lot of information … it’s been one of those weekends.
“There’s no way to find traction. In the race I tried everything possible I know how to do to find traction, whether it be short-shifting, being super patient on the throttle, whatever. It doesn’t matter what I did. You arrive to a certain point and it feels like at about 120-130km/h, once the forward momentum is enough, you start to lose load on the rear and the bike starts to spin like mad, and you can’t do anything about it.”
Miller gained six places in the first four laps, but admitted the limitations of his machinery forced him to battle in a way he knew was futile.
“I tried to fight with everybody tooth and nail, every person that came past me I was trying to pass back,” he said.
“You feel like a bastard when you’re doing that because you know you’re suffering so much … when they’re coming past on the acceleration and then you dive-bomb them, that’s all you can do.”