If Marc Marquez versus Francesco Bagnaia was a battle being waged in a boxing ring, the referee would have already called it off.
Marquez, in year one at the factory Ducati team Bagnaia has been ensconced in since 2021 – a period where the Italian has won two MotoGP championships and finished runner-up twice – has, in just nine rounds heading into this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, made a very good rider look decidedly second-rate.
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Marquez has won five Grands Prix, eight sprints, taken pole six times and racked up 270 world championship points in 2025. By contrast, his celebrated teammate has won just once – in Austin after Marquez crashed from a comfortable lead – been outqualified eight times in nine rounds, and comes to Assen after being outgunned in qualifying, the sprint and the Grand Prix last weekend at Mugello, where Marquez hadn’t won in 11 years and where Bagnaia had been unbeatable for the previous three seasons.
It’s why Marquez leads the championship – and Bagnaia by 110 points – with 13 rounds remaining this season, but the stats say only so much. According to one of Marquez’s former rivals and one-time teammate, the Spaniard’s impact at Ducati has Bagnaia altering the approach that made him a champion.
Jorge Lorenzo, the three-time MotoGP champion who retired after one season as Marquez’s Honda teammate in 2019, knows what it’s like to have Marquez inside your head. And, speaking on the Duralavita podcast after Mugello, Lorenzo feels Marquez’s mastery of Ducati’s difficult GP25 has Bagnaia spooked.
“I defend ‘Pecco’ [Bagnaia] … he’s not making excuses, but in that [Mugello] battle we saw an aggressive Pecco, [riding] like Marc,” Lorenzo said.
“It’s different from past years … in 2019 when [Marquez] was dominating with Honda, he was always aggressive and on the limit. When I was in Honda, I tried Marc’s bike and it was not feasible. If it doesn’t suit your riding style, you do the lap and the time doesn’t come.
“There are two types of riders, the sensitive ones as I was and as Pecco is … and there are fast riders like [Casey] Stoner or Marc, who are not as sensitive and don’t feel the changes too much … they don’t think as much.
“I’m surprised at final [Mugello] result … Marc finished with a big advantage, in the final part of the race Marc still had a few tenths [of a second] margin.”
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Bagnaia trying to out-Marquez Marquez in Mugello by fighting ferociously in the opening laps before fading to fourth place at the flag led the Italian to call his championship chances “impossible” last weekend; how that sentiment dictates his bid for a fourth straight win at Assen on Sunday is this weekend’s biggest source of intrigue.
While Marquez’s record at Assen is modest compared to his exploits elsewhere – the Spaniard has won in the Netherlands twice, but not since 2018 – this season has shown that his past counts for little.
Already in nine rounds, he’s banished 11-year hoodoos in Qatar and Italy; with Marquez a chance to win three Grands Prix in a row for the first time since his sixth world title in 2019, Bagnaia will need to be ready to brawl at a track where his opposition has barely shown him a front wheel since 2022, and at a track so close to his heart that he has the circuit layout and its geographical coordinates tattooed on his right arm.
Here’s your Insider’s Guide to round 10 of the MotoGP season, with the 26-lap Dutch Grand Prix set for 10pm AEST on Sunday after the 13-lap sprint race at 11pm Saturday AEST.
MILLER RELISHES GRIP AT BREAKTHROUGH TRACK
Jack Miller has shrugged off the disappointment of a calamitous Italian Grand Prix last weekend, where a litany of problems with his Yamaha saw him retire from the race as he attempts to bank results that will ensure he stays on the grid in 2026.
Miller, who qualified 13th at Mugello, was forced to retire just 10 laps into the 23-lap Grand Prix after his bike’s clutch “smoked itself” at the beginning of the race, which saw his slow getaway compounded by contact with a rival rider, his bike shedding one of its aerodynamic wings on the opening lap.
A fuel system problem later made the bike “unrideable” for Miller, with his Mugello non-score continuing a run of outs at the least successful circuit of his world championship career.
Locked in what amounts to a head-to-head battle with Pramac Yamaha teammate Miguel Oliveira for one place at the team alongside incoming World Superbikes star Toprak Razgatlioglu for 2026, Miller now has the races after Assen this weekend in Germany and the Czech Republic to stake his claim for an extension to his one-year contract, Oliveira’s deal with the team lasting until the end of 2026 but containing performance clauses that could see Yamaha cut the Portuguese rider loose.
Asked on Thursday at Assen if his Mugello DNF was frustrating at a time where he needs results, Miller was pragmatic.
“It is an issue, but what are you going to do?,” he said.
“It’s motorcycle racing, and we’re developing a bike at a rapid rate at the minute, and issues like that happen. At the end of the day, the team have only had the bike for half a season, not even, so they’re still learning as well while the bike’s still developing.
“The thing is, nobody wanted to touch [the Yamaha] 12 months ago, and now she’s a pretty hot ticket. So we’re doing something right.”
The 30-year-old insisted he had no news on his contract status for 2026, but reiterated his desire to continue with Pramac, which came after MotoGP world feed TV commentator Matt Birt told the Fox Sports’ ‘Pit Talk’ podcast earlier this week that he expects Miller to be retained over Oliveira.
PIT TALK PODCAST: MotoGP world TV feed commentator Matt Birt joins hosts Michael Lamonato and Matt Clayton to discuss the 2025 season so far, Jack Miller’s Yamaha future, the expectations for Toprak Razgatlioglu in 2026 and if Marc Marquez is stronger than ever after his Italian Grand Prix victory.
“Same old same old, I’m just playing the waiting game,” Miller said.
“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment with who stays and who goes. We’ll just wait and see with Yamaha, but my plan is to try to stay with them.
“I like the project and I believe I still have more to give here, so that’s my priority and where we’re focusing our energy.”
After nine rounds with Yamaha after coming across from KTM at the end of last season, Miller feels he has a handle on which circuits will suit the nimble YZR-M1 machine better than others and is bullish for Assen, site of his breakthrough first MotoGP victory nine years ago
“I’m ever the optimist, so I have the same mentality going into the weekend that you hope it’s going to be a good one,” he said.
“You try to sell it to yourself, that’s part of being a motorcycle racer even if it’s a track like Mugello, which has been my bogey track since I stepped into racing. You still go into it with a positive outlook.
“I’ve got a feeling of where it [Yamaha] is going work well, grip is the biggest issue for us. Low-grip tracks are our arch-nemesis at this point.
“It’s pretty grippy here and the bike should work well, so looking forward to putting the gremlins of last weekend behind us.”
Miler and Oliveira, along with factory Yamaha team stablemates Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins, will race on Sunday with a special one-off livery commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Yamaha Motor Company, all four bikes sporting a red and white paint scheme inspired by Japanese rider Noriyuki Haga’s livery in the 1999 World Superbike championship.
MARQUEZ: SHADES OF OLD RIVAL IN YOUNGER BROTHER’S SEASON
Marc Marquez has likened Alex Marquez’s consistency to former championship rival Andrea Dovizioso as he stands on the cusp of equalling the number of 500cc/MotoGP victories of Italian legend Giacomo Agostini this weekend.
Last Sunday’s victory in Italy was Marquez’s 67th in MotoGP; Agostini won 68 500cc Grands Prix in a career that finished in 1977 to be second to Valentino Rossi on the all-time win list.
Most 500cc/MotoGP wins, all-time (top 10)
89: Valentino Rossi
68: Giacomo Agostini
67: Marc Marquez
54: Mick Doohan
47: Jorge Lorenzo
38: Casey Stoner
37: Mike Hailwood
31: Eddie Lawson
31: Dani Pedrosa
30: Francesco Bagnaia
Active riders in italics.
On Thursday at Assen, the older Marquez sibling likened his younger brother’s season to that of Dovizioso in 2017, the-then Ducati rider matching Marquez with six victories before Marquez won the championship by 37 points, sealing it for Honda in the final round at Valencia when Dovizioso crashed out.
“Alex is one of the toughest rivals I’ve ever had, he doesn’t make mistakes and is always there, consistency is something that makes you fear your rivals a lot,” Marc Marquez said of his sibling, who trails him by 40 points in the championship standings.
“I am flattering a rival but he is still my brother, our relationship will not change because family comes before any title.
“[Alex] gives me very similar feelings to Dovizioso in 2017, he is always there on the podium. I won eight sprints, but he is second in all of them and won the one that got away from me. He is very consistent and fast, and has different strengths from mine. He will be the rival to beat between now and the end of the season.”
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Alex Marquez’s aggression in battles with his older brother was questioned after the Italian Grand Prix, where he finished second for the 13th time in 18 starts across sprints and Grands Prix this season.
Alex Marquez has beaten Marc just once in a head-to-head fight, which came in the Silverstone sprint in round seven, while his sole Grand Prix win in Spain in round five came after Marc had crashed out of the leading pack in the early laps.
On Thursday, Alex Marquez insisted Marc’s pace advantage makes any discussions about his aggression in combat irrelevant.
“At the moment, he is faster than us,” Alex Marquez said.
“Many times people say ‘Alex doesn’t attack him’ … I don’t attack him because he maybe has one tenth, two tenths [of a second] more. When somebody in front has one or two tenths more, you don’t arrive [in a position] to overtake them. You always are on the limit.
“It’s what the people want to push, to see some competition. We have that already – we are brothers so we’ve fought all of our lives.
“I have to make smart races … when an opportunity like Silverstone sprint arrives, I will attack him.
“Some people are trying to create a war or a battle between me and Marc.”
WORLD CHAMP EDGES CLOSER TO COMEBACK
Jorge Martin is one step closer to a return to the MotoGP grid, with the reigning world champion set for a medical check after the Dutch Grand Prix in a bid to come back in the Czech Republic (July 18-20) before MotoGP’s four-week mid-season break.
Martin has competed in just one Grand Prix weekend this season, in Qatar in April, after suffering multiple injuries in two separate pre-season crashes, and then falling into the path of Fabio Di Giannantonio in Lusail, the Aprilia rider suffering 11 fractured ribs and a collapsed lung after being struck by the Italian’s Ducati.
The 27-year-old is seeking to use a clause in his two-year contract with Aprilia to leave the Italian manufacturer after this season, with Honda – and the seat currently occupied by out-of-contract Luca Marini – his likely preferred destination.
Aprilia is waiting for Martin to get the all-clear from MotoGP’s medical director Dr Angel Charte on the Monday after Assen to organise a private test on MotoGP machinery for the Spaniard before he returns to racing action; a May rule change by MotoGP’s Grand Prix Commission allows for a rider to take part in a test on MotoGP machinery after missing at least three Grands Prix.
Martin will continue to be replaced at Aprilia this weekend by the team’s test rider, Italian Lorenzo Savadori.
Meanwhile, Marini – who has missed the past two Grands Prix after suffering multiple injuries after a Suzuka 8-Hour testing crash last month – will sit out again at Assen, former Aprilia rider and now Honda tester Aleix Espargaro deputising for the Italian at the factory Honda team alongside regular Joan Mir.
Espargaro finished on the Assen podium as recently as 2023, when he was third behind Bagnaia and Marco Bezzecchi.