Will the latest Márquez fightback start at Jerez?

There’s been lots of talk about Marc Márquez and retirement following a less-than-stellar start to his seventh MotoGP title defence and ongoing injury worries.

Before we get into the reasons for his lack of results, there are two points worth remembering…

First, I’ve learned over the decades not to judge motorcycle racing’s greats by normal human standards of toughness. These people will continue running into the fire long after you and I have turned on our heels and run for safety. And they will feel pain and keep digging deeper into that pain long after you and I have screamed ‘Enough!’.

“I like to suffer,” three-time MotoGP race winner Cal Crutchlow told me a few years ago. “I have a hardness about me that if it hurts, I want it to hurt more.”

That’s right, they are not normal.

Second, all this talk of retirement will only inspire Márquez whenever he has moments of doubt – and, yes, of course he has moments of doubt – because there’s nothing that lights a fire under a motorcycle racer than the desire to prove people wrong.

This is the f**k-you spirit that’s at the heart of all great bike racers, a raging stubbornness that makes them want to make the doubters eat their words.

It’s always been thus: John Surtees, the only racer to win both the MotoGP and Formula 1 car titles, attributed his success – and that of his racer dad – to the “inherent Surtees family cussedness”.

What’s holding Márquez back at the moment – is it him or his motorcycle?

In fact, he’s already told us. “It’s me that’s missing, not the bike,” he announced after finishing fifth last time out at COTA.

Right now, Márquez is a wounded lion. He’s the king of the jungle, limping about, getting beaten up by eager youngsters who want his crown.

Nevertheless, it’s worth examining what’s going on at Ducati, because the brand that has utterly dominated the last half-decade of MotoGP was soundly defeated by Aprilia at each of the first three rounds – Thailand, Brazil and the US.

Indeed, comparing the start of 2026 with the start of 2025 makes grim reading for Ducati – last year, Desmosedicis won the first three sprints and first three Grands Prix, whereas this year, Desmosedicis have won a single race so far, the Goiania sprint.

How best to judge the performance of Ducati’s Desmosedici GP26 versus the GP25? (While at the same time acknowledging that it was already Márquez making the difference last year.)

No point using Márquez’s results as a marker, due to his injury, and no point using team-mate Pecco Bagnaia’s, because the twice MotoGP champion is still all at sea. Which leaves us VR46 rider Fabio Di Giannantonio.

Di Giannantonio started last season injured, so let’s compare his most recent results with those from the end of last season.

At the two most recent grands prix, Di Giannantonio rode his GP26 to two pole positions and finished the Brazilian and US GPs in third and fourth. At Portimao and Valencia last November – after a full season developing the GP25 – he qualified ninth and third and finished eighth and third.

The Italian’s back-to-back poles are particularly significant because he had scored only one pole from his 80 previous MotoGP outings.

All this suggests the GP26 is a better motorcycle than the GP25, though it’s way too early to know if the bike is better than the hallowed GP24. Certainly, Ducati hasn’t made a big step forward like Aprilia, whose 2026 RS-GP is so far unbeaten on Sundays.

Aprilia’s speed has surprised some people, but it shouldn’t, because the RS-GP has been coming for years, growing step by step, ever since Aprilia dumped its 72-degree V4 engine and replaced it with a 90-degree V4 for 2020: podiums, then wins, then one-twos and last year third in the riders championship and second in the constructors championship, after finishing last in the constructors seven years in a row, from 2015 to 2021!

The Aprilia has looked good, on its day, throughout the last five years or so. What’s different now is that the Noale engineers have finally got the best out of Michelin’s current, super-grippy rear slick, which had caused the RS-GP problems both in corner entry and exit.

And funnily enough, this is what’s causing Márquez his biggest problem at the moment. This rear tyre actually has too much grip when it’s new, so it makes the motorcycle snappy and it overpowers the front tyre.

We’ve heard riders complain about these issues since the tyre was introduced in 2024. And already last year we saw Márquez adapt his race strategy after losing the front and crashing in the early stages at Jerez and Silverstone. After that, he took things steadily in the first laps, usually making the difference in the second half of races, using his skill on slippery, used tyres.

This year, Márquez doesn’t have the strength to control the bike’s snappiness in the early laps.

“In the first laps, with fresh tyres, the bike becomes more aggressive and I can’t ride like I want,” he said at COTA, where he was further weakened by a high-speed crash on Friday.

Márquez’s shoulder injury also forces him to ride in an unnatural position.

“I’m riding in a strange way – I cannot brake in a good position, then I’m not in a good position in the middle of the corner,” he says. “I’m still fast, but I cannot make the difference.”

Márquez certainly isn’t slow at the moment – his best race lap at COTA was only 0.019 seconds slower than winner Marco Bezzecchi‘s

He would almost certainly have finished on the podium at the season-opening Thai GP but for a buckled rear rim and flat tyre. Same in Brazil, where Goiania’s crumbling surface nearly had him on the ground, allowing Di Giannantonio past. And same in the States, where a long-lap penalty – for taking out Di Giannantonio in the sprint – put him 3.6 seconds outside of a podium finish.

No doubt Ducati has been grateful for the three-week break since COTA – due to the postponement of the Qatar GP – which has allowed its engineers to crunch the numbers and close the gap before facing Aprilia again.

The last couple of races suggest that the Bolognese don’t need to find much – around a tenth of second – to close the gap. And where do they need to find that fraction? In braking, because what had been the RS-GP’s weak point for many years – keeping the rear tyre on the road during heavy braking – is now its strongest point.

Thus Ducati’s current focus is engine-braking character, bike balance, rider position and seat and leg aero. At COTA, Ducati introduced a seat aerofoil and leg wings that were very near identical to the RS-GP’s current spec.

Meanwhile, Márquez’s focus has been strengthening his right shoulder, his body’s weakest point, after multiple injuries and surgeries over the years.

When he broke the coracoid process bone in his right shoulder at Mandalika last October it didn’t seem like too big a deal. But the coracoid is a crucial anchor point for muscles and ligaments, so it has a big effect on shoulder strength and stability. The same goes for the acromioclavicular ligaments, which connect the collarbone to the shoulder blade, that were damaged in the crash.

At the season-opening Thai GP, Márquez told us we wouldn’t know the real state of his body and his bike until Jerez, where he hasn’t won since 2019. Therefore ,this weekend and the next few races will tell us where he really is.