Márquez’s remarkable 100th GP win after 10 injury comebacks since 2020

Marc Márquez climbed into MotoGP’s most exclusive pantheon in Hungary last weekend, joining Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi as the only riders to have scored a century of grand prix victories since motorcycling’s world championship was born 77 years ago.

The number — 84 victories in MotoGP, 16 in Moto2 and 10 in 125s — is remarkable. Even more remarkable is the way Márquez has kept marching towards it in recent seasons, despite the repeated injury nightmares he has had to endure and overcome. Because every time he makes a comeback, there’s always the possibility that this one won’t work, that the mountain will prove too steep to climb.

Márquez has always crashed a lot, but he had always got off relatively lightly until recently.

During his first 12 seasons in GPs, he only twice missed races due to injury. He missed the start of his rookie 125cc season in 2008 due to a broken arm sustained in pre-season testing, and he missed the end of his rookie Moto2 season in 2011 due to diplopia (double vision), triggered by a huge high-side during practice for the Malaysian GP.

His most recent comeback from injury, at Mugello the weekend before Hungary’s Balaton Park, was his 10th in six years. This is difficult to process. How can a rider stand so much pain – physical and mental – and still keep going? Márquez is unique – no other rider has gone through quite so much hell and come out the other side

His Balaton triple crown – pole position, sprint victory and GP victory – told the story. Before his latest surgery, Márquez told us he was racing with one and a half arms. At Balaton he was perhaps racing with one and three-quarter arms. And yet his only plan was to dominate, never mind his constant downplaying.

This hard-headedness, this refusal to close the throttle, even when the odds are stacked against him, has been at the same time his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

What is certain is that he wouldn’t have got anywhere near as far as he’s got without this aspect of his character.

“If I see a wall I go through it,” he said a few years ago. “It doesn’t matter how many goes it takes or how hard I hit my head, I won’t stop until I’ve got through the wall… This has always been my approach and it will never change.”

It was the same at Balaton, where perhaps he should’ve still been easing his way back into racing, after his return at Mugello, where he had had neither the speed nor the strength to make the podium.

“I just need to be patient,” he said after Friday practice. “But it’s true that when I put on my helmet it’s difficult…”

Whatever his condition, Márquez struggles to control himself once he closes the visor.

His comebacks since he broke his right humerus (upper arm) at Jerez in 2020 make for gruesome but necessary reading, because it’s impossible to understand the enormity of his achievement without these details.

Comeback No10

Márquez’s recent Mugello return followed surgery to his right arm to fish out a screw that had been interfering with his radial muscle, causing sporadic loss of motor function. The screw was a remnant of earlier surgery.

This problem explained his struggles at earlier races. “The screw is giving me nerve problems – on and off and on and off – and you can’t ride a motorbike on and off,” he explained before going under the knife and missing the French and Catalan GPs. “I’m riding with one and a half arms.”

Comeback No9

Márquez’s 2026 Thai GP was his return to racing after missing the last four races of 2025, after being taken out during the Indonesian GP. That crash fractured the coracoid bone in his already much-mangled right shoulder. The coracoid is small but important – it’s an anchor point for ligaments and muscles.

Comeback No8

Márquez contested the 2023 British GP after missing the previous Dutch round, from which he withdrew after two crashes in practice.

Comeback No7

His Dutch GP return followed his withdrawal from the previous week’s German GP, following a record five crashes. This was when he realised he must leave Honda and find a Ducati ride.

Comeback No6

Márquez made a horrible start to 2023 when he lost the front and fell at Portimao, taking out Miguel Oliveira. He suffered a complicated fracture of his right hand, from which he came back at Le Mans, after missing three GPs.

Comeback No5

Márquez underwent his biggest surgery in June 2022, when surgeons carried out a humeral osteotomy, sawing through his messed-up right humerus and rotating the lower part by 34 degrees, to realign the arm. He returned to racing at Aragon, after missing six GPs.

Comeback No4

Márquez has had many horrific crashes but perhaps none worse than the mammoth high-side during warm-up for the 2022 Indonesian GP, which left him badly battered and brought back his diplopia. He missed the next race in Argentina, returning in the USA.

Comeback No3

The 2022 season-opening Qatar GP was Márquez’s first race since October 2021. He missed the last two GPs of 2021 after falling from his motocross bike, which triggered the first recurrence of diplopia since his 2011 Sepang accident.

Comeback No2

Márquez missed the last 13 races of 2020 and the first two of 2021 recovering from his Jerez 2020 crash. During this period he underwent three operations – the first to plate his broken right humerus, the second to re-plate the injury, the third to take a bone graph from his pelvis, because the fracture had become infected.

Comeback No1

The most ill-advised comeback of Márquez’s career. Following his crash during the COVID season-opening Spanish GP at Jerez, he had his broken humerus plated and returned to riding just four days later, for Saturday practice at the Andalusian GP at Jerez. He withdrew from the event when the arm became badly swollen.

There’s little doubt Márquez would’ve joined the 100 grand prix victories club much earlier than last weekend if he hadn’t foolishly decided to return immediately after the initial surgery on his broken arm.

How to rate Márquez’s century against those of Agostini and Rossi?

Agostini won 122 GP wins during his 13 seasons of world championship racing, 54 on 350s, 68 on 500s. He scored his 100th in the 1972 Swedish 500cc MotoGP race at Anderstorp.

Anderstorp ’72 tells the story of much of Agostini’s career. The Italian and his MV Agusta four-stroke triple won the race by 16 seconds and lapped everyone, apart from his fellow podium finishers, Rod Gould and Bo Granath, riding Yamaha and Husqvarna two-strokes.

The two-stroke engine had just begun its takeover of the premier-class, winning its first MotoGP race the previous year. Before that, it wasn’t unusual for Agostini to lap the entire grid at least once.

How come? Because MV mostly raced alone during its years of dominance, rarely facing rival manufacturers. Therefore most grids were full of privateer entrants, riding machines with maybe 30% less power than the MV.

There’s no doubt Ago had an easy life for much of his MotoGP career, but twice he proved he could win when he faced facing rival manufacturers.

In 1967 he beat Honda and Mike Hailwood fair and square, the pair taking five victories each. And in 1975, after he had seen the writing on the wall and quit MV to ride Yamaha two-strokes, he won a titanic battle with former MV team-mate Phil Read, who was still riding for the Italian brand. Ago won four races to Read’s three.

Rossi won 115 GPs during his 25 seasons, 12 on 125s, 14 on 250s and 89 on 500cc, 800cc, 990cc and 1000cc MotoGP bikes. He scored his 100th at Assen in 2009.

Grand prix bikes were much more equal during this period than they had been in Ago’s heyday. However, factory riders still enjoyed a significant advantage – faster engines, better tyres, cleverer electronics and so on – which fast-tracked them to the front of the pack.

Performance-parity technical regulations were introduced following the banning of tobacco advertising and the global financial crisis to make the racing more attractive to fans, because MotoGP desperately needed more income.

MotoGP’s one-make tyre rule arrived in 2009, the everything-the-same Moto2 class in 2010, MotoGP engine-equalisation in 2012 (four cylinders only, maximum 81mm bore) and MotoGP spec electronics in 2016.