Mat Oxley: An Isle of Man TT winner and endurance specialist, Mat has been writing about bike racing for Motor Sport since 2012

The last rider to dominate a MotoGP season like Marc Márquez dominated 2025 was… Marc Márquez in 2014 and 2019. This wasn’t only a story about the 32-year-old’s dazzling racetrack skills, it was also one of arguably the greatest sporting comebacks of all time.

In July 2020, Márquez broke his upper right arm at Jerez when his Honda RC213V clouted him in the gravel trap. Three surgeries followed – titanium plates, screws and bone grafts – the arm so mangled that even then he couldn’t ride at his best. In June 2022 surgeons sawed the humerus in two and rotated the lower part by 34 degrees, which brought him close enough to full strength.

However, by that time Honda had lost its way, so the RC213V was the worst bike on the grid. In 2024 Márquez took a £17m pay cut to leave Honda and join the independent Gresini squad, so he could ride the best bike, a Ducati Desmosedici.

Márquez’s performances with Gresini won him an official Desmosedici ride for 2025, with which he won 11 of the first 16 grands prix to seal his seventh MotoGP crown at round 17 of 22. Next time out a rival sent him flying, the injury forcing him to miss the last four races.

There was an irony to Márquez’s tortuous efforts to make his way into the official Ducati team for 2025 – for the first time in almost a decade the Italian manufacturer’s latest MotoGP bike wasn’t the best on the grid. Too much engine inertia made the Desmosedici GP25 difficult to control during the braking and entry phase. Márquez could ride around this problem, but team-mate Pecco Bagnaia – who had finished first or second in the previous four championships – couldn’t and slumped to fifth overall.

Thus Márquez’s biggest rival was younger brother Álex, aboard a more rider-friendly 2024 Desmosedici for Gresini. Álex, a twice world champion in the smaller classes, surprised many with his speed, which took him to his first MotoGP victories. Between them the siblings won 14 of 22 GPs, more often than not climbing the podium together and making plenty of history along the way.

Álex often chased big brother home, so he had the chance to examine his talent more closely than ever.

“Marc is more comfortable on that line between crashing and staying on the bike,” explained Álex. “No other rider is as comfortable as him at the limit. This is the reality. He can play with the limit because he knows he will have two warnings from the front tyre and he will save them, whereas you will have one and you will crash.”

Following July’s Czech GP at Brno, Ducati Corse boss Gigi Dall’Igna congratulated Marc in his garage.

“I already knew, but now I understand better, why we have struggled to win a championship so far,” said Dall’Igna, whose official team had won only two titles since he assumed command of Ducati’s MotoGP project a decade ago.

His words to Marc were extraordinary, especially because only a few metres away sat a crestfallen Bagnaia, debriefing with his crew after another miserable race aboard his GP25.

“No other rider is as comfortable as Marc Márquez on the limit”

Ducati’s struggles with their latest Desmosedici weren’t all their own fault. New concession regulations had been introduced by MotoGP rights-holders Dorna to help the struggling Japanese factories Honda and Yamaha, which had been left trailing by Dall’Igna introducing Formula 1-inspired technologies to MotoGP: downforce aerodynamics, ride-height devices and so on.

The new rules allowed Ducati to go testing very rarely, so it was no great surprise they got their 2025 motorcycle wrong.

Meanwhile Ducati’s Italian rivals Aprilia – there is real animosity between the two brands – surged forward with their RS-GP, a motorcycle that copies the same basic configuration as the Ducati. The RS-GP won three of 2025’s final four races, suggesting that Aprilia may finally be ready to challenge Ducati, who have won the last four riders’ titles and last six constructors’ crowns.

Aprilia had a new chief engineer and two new riders for 2025, including reigning champion Jorge Martin.

Martin’s title defence was derailed by a grim run of injuries: a broken right hand during pre-season testing, a broken left hand while training for his return, a collapsed lung and 11 broken ribs during his comeback race in Qatar and a broken collarbone in Japan.

In his absence, young team-mate Marco Bezzecchi stepped up, surprising Aprilia engineers with his ability to lead the development process. The Italian’s three victories took him to third overall, a best-ever for the Noale-based manufacturer.

Much of Aprilia’s new speed came from improved braking performance. Engineers tweaked the RS-GP’s engine-brake software and increased downforce with innovative new winglets that allowed riders to use more rear brake, without overheating the rear tyre. However, soon after season’s end there were moves to ban the new winglets. Aprilia cried foul, suspecting dirty deeds from Ducati.

Honda was the only other maker to win a race in 2025, and that was in the rain at Le Mans, where French veteran Johann Zarco had 150,000 fans roaring La Marseillaise from the venue’s vast grandstands. This was the goose-bump moment of the year.

Honda is MotoGP’s most successful manufacturer, with 25 constructors’ championships since 1966, but the company ended 2022, 2023 and 2024 at the bottom of the constructors’ league. For 2025, Honda did something that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago. It hired a gaijin technical director, former Aprilia engineer Romano Albesiano. Little by little, Honda closed the gap to Ducati – from an average race deficit of 30.1sec in 2024 to 13.5sec – and scored their first dry race podiums since Márquez defected to Ducati at the end of 2023. But they still have a way to go before they’re even close to reliving past glories.

Austrian brand KTM – Europe’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer – started 2025 on the brink of bankruptcy, so the fact they managed go racing at all was an achievement.

Not that KTM’s star rider Pedro Acosta saw it that way. Never mind the company’s financial crisis, the Spanish youngster was impatient with lack of progress. The RC16 was often the quickest bike on the grid – surpassing 225mph at Mugello – but usually ate its rear tyre, leaving Acosta helpless in the later stages of races. He finished second in Hungary, Malaysia and Indonesia but never looked like winning.

While Honda improved in 2025, Yamaha slumped to the bottom of the constructors’ league, its inline-four YZR-M1 a mostly useless weapon against the V4-powered machines used by the other manufacturers. There are various reasons why V4 engines work better in MotoGP, mostly race dynamics and tyre performance, which is why Yamaha is finally replacing its inline-four with a V4, basically another Ducati clone.

Test rider Augusto Fernández raced the new machine several times towards the end of the season, the bike’s lack of performance spooking number-one Fabio Quartararo. Yamaha now faces a huge challenge trying to build a competitive motorcycle for 2026, which begins in Thailand on March 1.

MotoGP ’25 standings