The last time Marc Márquez won a race at Mugello was 11 years ago, when he was joined on the podium by Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. Mugello is a fast, flowing circuit, which doesn’t allow the six-time MotoGP champion to use his killer skill: hammering into corners hard on the brakes.

But that doesn’t matter anymore, because Márquez can show his speed in different ways with Ducati’s Desmosedici, a more rounded motorcycle than the Honda RC213V he rode from 2013 to 2023.

Márquez’s fifth grand prix victory and sixth sprint win from the first nine rounds of 2025 were his most important successes of the year so far, because he had expected much stronger challenges from team-mate Pecco Bagnaia and brother Alex, who both like the epic Italian venue more than he does.

Instead he won both races at a canter, moving into the lead, building a buffer, then controlling the gap to extend his championship lead over his brother to 40 points.

And yet even after his sprint victory he insisted that he was in defence mode.

“I’m trying not to lose points,” he said.

Then he was asked how this could be after what he’d just done on the track.

“Before starting this GP I had one mentality and during a GP I cannot change my mentality,” he replied. “It means we need to be realistic. If for some reason Pecco or Alex are super-fast on Sunday I need to accept it and take points. I feel in good form but this is not a circuit to attack. Today we were able to attack and we will try tomorrow if we are able.”

His Mugello walkover – pole position with a qualifying record plus sprint and GP wins – was also important for the numbers. On Saturday Márquez became the first rider in eight decades of world championship racing to score a hundred poles. And Sunday’s victory was MM93’s 93rd, which also takes him to within one premier-class success of eight-time MotoGP king Giacomo Agostini, who stands second in the all-time winners league behind Valentino Rossi.

These numbers highlight an extraordinary talent who has been to hell and back in recent years, following the arm injury which took him to the verge of retirement. Who knows where he would be in the winners league if hadn’t spent three years mostly under the surgeon’s knife.

Márquez isn’t only hugely talented and hugely determined, he’s also very clever. He’s an all-in 24/7 racing machine who’s always racing, whether he’s on the track or not.

The 32-year-old knows very well that utterly dominating Mugello wouldn’t only batter the morale of his team-mate, who reigned supreme there in 2023 and 2024, it would also pain his old rival Rossi, who last year reignited their ancient feud and was surely hoping his protégé Bagnaia would at least defeat Márquez in a VR46 heartland.

The wounds of 2015 festered all weekend, with a fair few fans booing Márquez, much to the disgust of the factory Ducati team and especially team manager Davide Tardozzi, who stood before the main grandstand following the sprint, arguing with anyone who dared voice their dislike of Ducati’s new star.

“To hear what I heard yesterday wasn’t good,” said Tardozzi on Sunday.

Márquez’s sprint victory was so complete that it left little doubt about the outcome of the main race. In a rare lapse, he turned off his launch control on the way to the sprint grid, so when the lights went out he was still fussing with his launch-control button. Down in eighth place in the charge to the first corner, he finished the first lap in third, took the lead on lap four and beat his brother by 1.4 seconds, with Bagnaia a further second down.

Both Alex and Bagnaia gave him a hard time in the first few laps of Sunday’s GP but as soon as he got serious it was game over.

Márquez may already have won five GPs but he’s also crashed in three, so he’s had to think hard about what he’s doing during the first few laps, which caught him out at Jerez and Silverstone.

The fact that he now knows what to do is ominous for his rivals.

Márquez no longer rides at his maximum in the early stages because it’s too risky – when his tyres are new the rear has so much grip that it takes away grip from the front. So he has adapted his strategy and riding technique to get around this tricky issue – he has refined what he does in corner entry and knows he must wait until the rear loses a little grip, which makes the bike more balanced, before he starts to really push.

“The team is trying to help me understand the first laps with new tyres but in the end the rider is the one that can make the biggest difference,” he said. “So I’ve adapted my riding style to try to be more focused in the very last part of corner entry, which is where I normally crash with new tyres…”

The first quarter of the race was spectacular, as the three Ducati riders swapped both the lead and paint, Bagnaia lucky to survive a heavy impact when his front tyre tagged Márquez’s rear tyre. Afterwards both factory riders were summoned to Race Direction to discuss these moments but all was deemed okay.

“I was breathing more than normal [during the three-way fight],” added Márquez. “I was repeating in my mind, the race is super long, the race is super long!”

Would this be the moment Bagnaia fully engaged with his new team-mate for the first time? Not really, because the early laps were a bit of a mirage. While Márquez was waiting for his rear to lose grip, Bagnaia was making hay, before his front lost grip. After the sprint he said his front tyre had lasted five laps and he expected the same in the main event.

“I was feeling good, then after six laps the front started to drop, so I had to slow down because I was risking a crash,” said the Italian, who had a big moment on lap six. “I was almost on the ground at the last corner, just trying to do the same line as I used to.”

Bagnaia has been battling this problem all season – the front of his GP25 won’t do what he wants it, so he’s locking and losing the front into corners, then overusing the tyre, trying to get the bike turned.

And there’s no sign of him turning the corner, literally or metaphorically.

His misbehaving GP25 was at its worst braking from 225mph into Turn 1, where he couldn’t do what he did last year – kick the rear tyre sideways to help him take some load off the front tyre. Whenever he tried to do that on Sunday the rear stepped out, then snapped violently back into line, leaving him teetering on the edge of disaster.