Lost.
Lost (just), lost (just), lost (just).
Lost. Lost. Lost. Lost.
They’re Marc Marquez’s year-by-year results when MotoGP visits Spielberg, site of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix and the beginning of a 10-round run in just 14 weeks to wrap up 2025.
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And it’s a record that leaves you scratching your head, given Marquez’s prowess seemingly everywhere else.
The Red Bull Ring has been kryptonite to MotoGP’s Superman, and is completely anomalous. Of the 24 circuits Marquez has raced on during his 12-year, 201-race premier-class career, there’s just three others – Mandalika in Indonesia (only two starts), Buddh in India (just one) and Portimao in Portugal (four) – where he’s yet to win besides the Red Bull Ring.
But Austria stands in a class of one over eight starts as an outlier that, on the surface, makes no sense.
Of the circuits that have been on the calendar for the majority of Marquez’s career since 2013, the Red Bull Ring has run circles around Marquez since it came onto the schedule in 2016. Short, relatively straightforward and with only two high-speed left-hand corners – a Marquez speciality – in its 10-turn layout, it’s a track Marquez has never particularly enjoyed, and is yet to master.
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It’s also a box that Marquez will be desperate to tick this weekend, his comfortable 120-point championship lead be damned.
The 2025 season has been all about Marquez settling old scores with tracks that have tripped him up. Success in Spielberg will be another hammer blow against a chasing pack peering optimistically for some semblance of a weakness, but mostly not liking Marquez’s approach to, this season, righting historical wrongs.
HOW BAD HAS AUSTRIA BEEN?
The Red Bull Ring hasn’t been a complete graveyard for Marquez, but it hasn’t been special for a rider with 70 premier-class wins (and counting) on his CV.
While Marquez strongholds like the Sachsenring (nine wins), Aragon and the Circuit of the Americas (seven wins apiece) and Phillip Island (four wins) are well known, less emphasis is placed on those rare tracks that have been regular stops on the schedule since the Spaniard debuted in 2013 where he’s left more often than not with precious little to show for it.
Even from the list of tracks where the results have trickled more than flowed, Austria stands out for one very notable reason.
Marquez’s five worst tracks, by points (2013-25)
97: Red Bull Ring, Austria (8 starts, 0 wins, 3 podiums, 3 poles)
100: Hondo River Spa, Argentina (7 Starts, 4 Wins, 4 Podiums, 6 Poles)
101: Buriram, Thailand (6 starts, 3 wins, 3 podiums, 2 poles)
107: Silverstone, United Kingdom (10 starts, 1 win, 4 podiums, 5 poles)
119: Mugello, Italy (12 starts, 2 wins, 4 podiums, 3 poles)
(minimum five MotoGP Grand Prix starts, sprints in 2023-25 not included)
Marquez’s Austrian stats illustrate the numbers, but not the nuance.
The Spielberg circuit’s reappearance on the calendar in 2016 – it previously hosted the world championship in 1996-97 when it was known as the A1-Ring – coincided with Ducati re-emerging as a frontline force for the first time since Casey Stoner left the Italian manufacturer for Honda in 2011.
PIT TALK PODCAST: MotoGP is back … but can Marquez banish his bad memories of Austria? Listen to Pit Talk below.
Italian Andrea Iannone took Ducati’s first win for over five years in that rebooted 2016 event, the circuit’s unusual mix of long straights into slow corners playing perfectly to the Desmosedici’s rocket-ship straight-line acceleration and strong braking, and not penalising it for – then – its deficiencies in turning and fast, interlinked corners.
It’s primarily for that reason that Marquez – world champion for Honda every year from 2016-19 – never won in Austria once the race came back onto the schedule, and was memorably beaten by the barest of margins by Ducati riders for three straight years.
In 2017, Marquez engaged in a mighty scrap with Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso in the closing stages that produced one of MotoGP’s most memorable finishes, Marquez dive-bombing Dovizioso into the final corner before the Italian slithered back through to win by 0.176 seconds.
Dovizioso’s teammate Jorge Lorenzo denied Marquez by 0.130secs in another breathless last-lap duel in 2018, while a year later, Dovizioso doubled down on 2017 by brilliantly executing a clinical move down the inside of Marquez at the final turn on the final lap to win by 0.213secs.
Marquez – who suffered a career-changing right arm injury in the first race of 2020 – was either absent or compromised for his next four Austrian attempts, with just a solitary top-10 finish (eighth in 2021) before last year’s fourth place which, in reality, was far more impressive than it appears on paper.
Riding a second-string Gresini Ducati, Marquez dropped to 14th at the first corner from third on the grid in 2024 after a last-gasp front tyre change to replace a snapped valve saw him panicked off the start and with next-to-no grip as his two tyres were running at completely different temperatures.
In the following 27 laps, an unleashed Marquez overtook 10 riders and was, for several laps, faster than race-leader (and 2025 teammate) Francesco Bagnaia, who was on his way to a hat-trick of Red Bull Ring victories.
Speed, then, isn’t a Marquez problem in Austria. Circumstance, clearly, has been.
But as Marquez has shown already in 2025, history and precedent have been no match for a rider who has relished his move to the factory Ducati team and a chance to ride the best bike in the field, and run with it to win after win after win.
A SEASON OF SHATTERING HOODOOS
In building a 120-point championship lead after 12 rounds, Marquez has made a habit of mostly winning at tracks where he’s traditionally been strong, while making light of his spotty circuits where success has either been fleeting, or a long time in the past.
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In Qatar in round four, Marquez – winless at Lusail since 2014 – won the sprint race and Grand Prix from pole position. Five rounds later at Mugello in Italy – and in front of a pro-Valentino Rossi crowd that cheered for his Ducati but not for him – he repeated the dose for his first win at the Tuscan circuit since 2014. A round afterwards in the Netherlands, Marquez won both races again for his first victory at Assen since 2018.
Given his past, they’ve been victories worth more than the 25 points they come with, given the psychological blows they land on their opposition and – in particular – teammate Bagnaia, who had owned Mugello and Assen in recent years before Marquez’s arrival on the other side of the garage.
It’s why, when faced with a situation where he doesn’t need to win – given his title advantage – Marquez can’t stop himself from trying. His sprint win in Germany in round 11 was a case in point, hunting down and passing long-time race leader Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) on the final lap despite taking more risks for a paltry three extra points he didn’t realistically need.
Marquez will know his barren Austrian record backwards, and will say all the sensible things in Thursday’s pre-event press conference while talking up his rivals, and doing his best to water down expectations.
But when his helmet visor snaps shut at 2pm local time on Sunday, Marquez will become a different animal.
Armed with the machinery to end his Austrian hoodoo and with margin to mitigate his risk-reward ratio calculations, he’ll be laser-focused on ending a run of outs that has been as explainable and enduring as it has been irritating.
That he could end Bagnaia’s three-year reign over the Red Bull Ring and twist the knife into his teammate’s troubled season even further will add more motivation he doesn’t even need, but will happily take.