You could forgive Marc Marquez for looking around and, as diplomatically as he could, ponder what the hell everyone else was doing.
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The Spanish great’s emphatic victory in the German Grand Prix was as close to a sure thing as exists in MotoGP – Sunday’s win was his ninth premier-class success at the Sachsenring and 12th in Germany across all three world championship classes since 2010 – but by the time he achieved it after 30 laps of the shortest (3.67km) circuit on the calendar, more than half the field were picking gravel out of their bikes or their leathers, or sitting in the garage having not competed after battering themselves in practice and qualifying trying to keep up.
After the most bruising Grand Prix in more than a decade – the 10 finishers were the fewest to complete a race since the 2011 Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island also saw just 10 riders make the chequered flag – almost every other rider had tales of woe or misfortune to share on the season’s most peculiar track, a corkscrewing mix of 13 corners where 10 of them turn left.
Anticlockwise circuits are Marquez’s sweet spot. Sachsenring, the sweetest of all. Little wonder he carried an expression that suggested he was wondering what all the fuss was about, even if his words straddled a fine line between supreme confidence and diplomacy.
At the Dutch Grand Prix at Assen last time out – where he hadn’t won since 2018 – Marquez admitted he’d won on a day where he rode smarter as much as he’d ridden faster. Mugello – where he’d not won for 11 years – was similar.
Sachsenring, though, was another matter entirely.
“I’m super happy because this was one of the tracks I mark on the calendar to attack,” he said.
“It was to defend, the last two ones [Mugello and Assen]but this one it’s true that as we know, it’s a special racetrack for me. We did a perfect weekend, super concentrated. I knew my rhythm was faster than the others, and I just try to don’t exaggerate and flow on the racetrack.
“Today, I was flowing. I was in the perfect line in every corner because I was not at my extra limit.”
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Most of his rivals went well beyond theirs.
Fellow Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli and KTM’s Maverick Vinales withdrew during the weekend before race day after injuring themselves in sprint race and qualifying crashes respectively.
Ducati’s Fabio Di Giannantonio was the closest thing Marquez had to a rival, but crashed out of second place on lap 18. Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi – who inherited second from his Italian compatriot – did likewise three laps later.
KTM’s Pedro Acosta and Honda’s Johann Zarco had their own, separate, stacks. Aprilia rookie Ai Ogura binned it on lap 22 and pinballed a luckless Joan Mir (Honda).
On it went. On went Marquez.
On to a 69th MotoGP victory in his milestone 200th start, and one that came by 6.380 seconds after he rolled out of a seven-second plus lead with a lap to go. On to an 83-point championship lead with half the season remaining. And on, surely, to the seventh premier-class title that has eluded him since 2019.
“I’m feeling super good, but we are halfway of the championship,” he cautioned.
“Exactly in the middle of the championship. Still 11 races to go and many races in a row, back-to-back races. So we need to keep focused, because with the pressure and ambition it works better.
“It’s super important to keep enjoying on the bike. If you are winning, it means that you are enjoying, and this season I am enjoying a lot. To achieve my 200 GPs with a victory means we are still in a very good level.”
RAIN EXPLAINS PAIN, FEWEST FINISHERS IN 14 YEARS
What was behind all of the crashes and carnage that befell eight riders in the race, all but one of whom crashed out in the first three corners of the lap?
Marquez’s factory Ducati teammate, Francesco Bagnaia, picked his way through the mess to finish third after qualifying a season-worst 11th, and recognised during the race why his rivals were going down like skittles.
The Italian – who said he was “shocked by what I did” after finishing a dreadful 12th in a sprint race held 24 hours earlier in the rain – felt Saturday’s conditions dictated the way Sunday panned out.
“I think it was for a wind that was pushing from behind, but also because the track was completely clean from the rain of yesterday,” he said of the crashes at the Sachsenring’s first turn, where the races of Di Giannantonio, Bezzecchi, Ogura, Mir and Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori all came to an end on wearing tyres from laps 18-22 of the 30-lap race.
“I was expecting more or less the situation could be like this, because I was remembering last year and after 10-15 laps the first corner started to become tricky or sketchy, and it was the same situation.
“The start of the race I was pushing there, but towards the end of the race I was decreasing the performance in corner one because I started to lock [the front tyre] the same, and I lost it twice. After this, I say ‘it’s OK like this in corner one, and I’ll push in all the others’.”
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Di Giannantonio’s off was the most painful, given the Ducati rider had muscled his way past a host of rivals to clear off and at least keep Marquez within sight, while Savadori’s second crash of the race came with a double long-lap penalty for his next race for falling while not slowing for the yellow flags being waved for the Ogura/Mir contact ahead of him; with Savadori set to be replaced by Aprilia’s returning world champion Jorge Martin for the next round in the Czech Republic, that penalty will be on ice for when – or if – the Italian returns.
The eight non-finishers came from a grid already missing four regular riders on Sunday, Morbidelli injuring his left collarbone in a high-speed sprint race shunt on Saturday, and Vinales dislocating and fracturing his left shoulder in a qualifying high-side. Neither rider is expected to participate in next weekend’s Czech Republic Grand Prix at Brno.
Honda’s Somkiat Chantra, who had right knee surgery after a training crash following the Dutch GP, never made it to Germany and will also miss the Brno event, while KTM’s Enea Bastianini was struck down with appendicitis on the eve of the Sachsenring round.
YOUNGER MARQUEZ GETS UNEXPECTED BOOST
Besides Bagnaia salvaging a podium from a weekend that looked completely lost after Saturday, Alex Marquez was the other big winner on Sunday at the Sachsenring, the Gresini Ducati rider finishing second to his older brother for the sixth time in a Grand Prix this season.
Coming to Germany after breaking his left hand at Assen, the younger Marquez finished a cautious eighth in Saturday’s sprint, snapping a run of 10 straight sprint podiums that had seen him – mathematically and distantly – become Marc Marquez’s biggest rival for the championship this season.
In dry conditions on Sunday and from fifth on the grid, Marquez inherited a podium place on lap 18 when Di Giannantonio crashed, and second position three laps later when Bezzecchi’s race ended in the same turn one gravel trap.
The 29-year-old’s pace was decent enough, but to lose just five world championship points to his sibling on a Sunday where Marc Marquez was in his own postcode was damage limitation in the extreme.
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“The thing today was, because I was injured, to not crash,” Alex Marquez said.
“When you are injured, you take care a little bit more about the details.
“Today was an important day. Yesterday in the wet, I suffer from thinking too much for not crashing or making a mistake. Today, I was riding in a better way.
“After what happened in Assen, to be here in second is something that gives to me a lot of confidence, a lot of boost. Before coming here to Sachsenring, you are thinking to make second [place] because you know Marc here is super difficult to beat. So second is something super amazing, and I will try to recover something in these next three days and to arrive in Brno a little bit better.”
‘PAIN IN THE A**E’: MILLER’S LAMENT DESPITE SEASON-BEST WEEKEND
Australia’s Jack Miller had his third-best Grand Prix result of the season with eighth place on Sunday, which came after he’d finished fifth in Saturday’s sprint, his best short-race result since the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix last August.
Miller’s 13 points from Germany represented his best single-event haul of 2025, and elevated him to 16th in the world championship standings at a crucial time as Pramac Yamaha looks set to make an imminent decision of who will partner incoming World Superbikes star Toprak Razgatlioglu in the team next season.
Miller’s teammate Miguel Oliveira was the race’s first crasher on lap four, while Moto2 up-and-comer Diogo Moreira – tabbed as a potential Yamaha option for 2026 if Pramac releases both Miller and Oliveira – will start next weekend’s Moto2 race from pit lane after being penalised for leaving the track and rejoining “in an unsafe manner”, the Brazilian pulling in front of rival David Alonso and causing a massive crash with the Colombian Moto2 rookie on Sunday.
On a day where so many rivals fell by the wayside, Miller was pleased to have finished, if not the margin to the winner on a day where he felt the lack of dry track time across a rain-hit weekend saw his race become harder the longer it went.
“I stayed on, but 25 seconds away from Marc [Marquez] is a pain in the a**e,” Miller said after dropping from sixth with three laps remaining.
“The race was to be expected with only one day of dry [track] time and then a 30-lap race, not having a massive amount of [dry-weather] data makes things hard to get precise.
“I swapped engine maps [to combat tyre wear] with eight laps to go, and it turned to s**t. [The bike] stopped driving as well off the last corner, so the last eight laps were pretty tricky. Whether I gave it a little bit too much at the beginning … I felt like I was nursing it pretty good, but I definitely didn’t have f**king tyre left, I was glad to see the chequered flag when it came out.”