Marc Márquez on the cusp of MotoGP history

This year Marc Márquez has gone racing with one and a half arms and now he has one and a half hands on the 2026 MotoGP championship.

So far he’s won 17 races – sprints and grands prix – which is more than the next five riders – Jorge Martin, Marco Bezzecchi, Pedro Acosta, Ai Ogura and Fabio Di Giannantonio – combined. And he’s gone from eighth at round seven to likely champion at round 21.

Even if nearest rival Martin wins the last four races – both sprints and both Grands Prix in Portugal and Valencia – Márquez needs only one Sunday podium to wrap up his eighth MotoGP crown.

Therefore Aprilia’s only hope of winning the rider championship with Martin or Marco Bezzecchi – whose sole title chance is winning the last four races while Márquez scores zero points – would seem to be kidnapping the 33-year-old Spaniard for the next few weeks. This has never happened in MotoGP, although there’s at least one incident of a team kidnapping a rival team’s motorcycles to take them out of the championship. But that’s a story for another day.

Márquez may stand on the cusp of history – equalling Giacomo Agostini’s all-time record of eight premier-class titles – but he knows better than most that anything can happen in motorcycle racing and usually does.

His focus for the last two rounds will obviously be staying out of trouble.

“I took extra risks in the overseas races,” he said after finishing second to Bezzecchi on Sunday. “Now I want to calm down and I think it’s time to step back and continue taking points.”

Oh yeah? How exactly do you do that in MotoGP, because the moment you roll the throttle a degree or two, you find yourself deep in the jungle, surrounded by axe-wielding maniacs? Just ask Pecco Bagnaia, who may miss the rest of the season after being taken out of the sprint by Fermin Aldeguer. Imagine if that had been Márquez.

There is no safe place in MotoGP – as Márquez and Bezzecchi proved in the Qatar sprint – but usually the safest place is out front.

“If you don’t attack, you get attacked,” said Márquez the previous weekend in Malaysia.

That’s how he rode in Qatar. Yes, he made sure he didn’t overstress his front tyre in the early stages of Sunday’s race (because Losail’s fast, sweeping turns eat the right side of the front tyre), but he was in attack mode to get himself clear of the jungle, while also knowing there was no point in even trying to stay with Bezzecchi. Like everything in MotoGP it’s a balancing act: attack, not too much, not too little.

And then Márquez received two gifts. First, Pedro Acosta had to let him through because his KTM’s front tyre was under the minimum-pressure limit. Then Raul Fernández had to switch his Trackhouse Aprilia into fuel-saving mode (Losail is a thirsty racetrack), making him easy prey for Márquez.

Márquez was physically destroyed by the end of Sunday’s race, even though he had been saving himself in practice, by doing short runs.

Five GPs in six weeks, the last three on consecutive weekends – that’s eight days of practice, qualifying and racing in the last 16 days – is tough for everyone, especially for Márquez, considering his mangled right arm, which forces him to over-compensate with the rest of his body.

However, there will be no rest until the title is won.

“Now it’s time to be super-concentrated – just train, eat, sleep, repeat, like this until Portimao,” he said.

While the 2026 rider title is all but won, the constructors’ championship is still very much up for grabs, between Ducati and Aprilia.

Fans often complain that there are no real rivalries in MotoGP anymore, that the riders are too nice to each other when they’re off their bikes, that there are no verbal slagging matches, which used to create extra entertainment in days gone by.

This may be true, but there is real enmity between the houses of Bologna and Noale, like a 21st century petrol-and-rubber edition of the Montagues and Capulets in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The two houses never miss the chance to have a pop at each other.