How Spanish MotoGP practice showed the Marquez brothers at their best

Trouble free, Friday at the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix was not for MotoGP’s leading brothers. From the off in FP1, Marc Marquez had his session interrupted by a clutch issue on his number one factory Ducati, and then a suspected oil leak on his second bike.

Younger brother Alex Marquez took a tumble at Turn 1, but brushed it off to go fastest in the session ahead of Marc Marquez. Then in Practice in the afternoon, Alex Marquez brought out the red flags when he crashed going through the fast Turn 5 right-hander while chasing his brother.

The Gresini rider tumbled through the gravel and gave his arms a good whack. After some doubt about him rejoining the session, he ultimately did so and went on to set a new lap record on his 2024-spec bike to see out the day fastest of all with a 1m35.991s.

Marc Marquez almost ended the Practice session the way his brother started it, as a last-gasp push to trouble the top of the timesheets led him to almost throw his factory team Ducati down the road at Turn 6. He survived the scare and rounded out the day fourth overall.

Separated by 17 points coming into their home event, it’s no surprise that all eyes are on the pair. While Marc Marquez has taken all the plaudits for his near-perfect start to the 2025 campaign with four poles, four sprint wins and three grand prix victories, the job Alex Marquez has done to consistently be second-fastest behind his brother shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Marc Marquez has warned since Thailand that Alex Marquez will win races in 2025, and plenty of them. As far as he is concerned, after Friday “at the moment the strongest one is Alex”.

Marc Marquez's pace disproves his own claims about Alex Marquez

Alex Marquez was lucky to walk away from his second crash of the day in Practice with just some pain in his arm from the large stones in the Jerez gravel trap. Upset by what he labels his “mistake”, he was compelled to get back on track and get ahead of the wheel again.

Producing the first official 1m35s lap of the Jerez circuit was a hell of a way to do that. But it, as Gresini team boss Michele Masini said on the world feed after the session, “f****d” the younger Marquez brother’s run plans.

As such, he didn’t complete any meaningful race running on medium tyres like his front-running contemporaries did. This makes placing him in the pecking order difficult, though there is no doubt that his feeling on the GP24 will surely put him right in the thick of it.

“The mistake was that I rode with too much confidence,” he explained about the crash. “The bike was too good, honestly speaking, and I was not feeling the limit. It was like this bike had no limits here. But then I realised the limit is there.”

Marc Marquez has already somewhat offered a glimpse into his mentality regarding any threat from his brother this weekend. Speaking to the media on Friday, he is quoted by es.motorsport.com as saying: “He’s my main rival now, but if I don’t beat him it’s no big deal. The important thing is to finish first in the world championship.”

Championship leader Marquez’s FP1 troubles did somewhat set him back in his race preparations, with the Ducati rider believing he lost at least half of the morning as a result. This had a knock-on effect of slowing down his race set-up work in Practice, but felt at the end that he was going in the right direction.

For all his caution, though, the medium tyre analysis of the top 10 riders in Practice is somewhat alarming for his rivals.

*Alex Marquez, Fabio Di Giannnantonio and Pedro Acosta did not do representative medium tyre running

While he doesn’t take outright honours in terms of average pace, he was the only rider in the above sample to put more than 10 laps on a medium rear tyre (which was the race option last year and will likely be again in 2025). His best lap on that tyre was a 1m36.973s set on its 16th lap, and at that stage of the session put him 0.126s from top spot - which was held by Fabio Quartararo on a Yamaha with a fresh soft rear on it.

With the sweltering Jerez temperatures set to continue into the weekend, Marc Marquez’s race management that he so expertly won the Qatar GP with will come to the fore.

Outside challengers knock on the door to Marquez dominance at Jerez

Pecco Bagnaia ended Friday happy with the progress he has made on his bike. He said after Friday’s running that he needs to find something more on the front-end to improve braking on corner entry.

Second overall on outright speed, Bagnaia’s race pace backs up what he says. He’s in the mix, but almost a tenth and a half per lap down on his team-mate Marc Marquez and a few hundredths shy of VR46’s Franco Morbidelli.

Winner of the last three Spanish GPs at Jerez, this has often been the point of the season - when MotoGP comes back to Europe - where Bagnaia begins to flourish. That remains the hope for the double world champion.

He worked with different rear aero to Marquez on his factory Ducati, likely aimed at helping to limit the feeling he has been having of the rear pushing the front under braking. At 26 points down in the standings, Bagnaia needs to start cutting into this disadvantage. But the big question mark for his weekend remains his form in the sprints on the smaller fuel tank.

The short, tight nature of Jerez tends to bring the field closer together. The outright lap times and the race pace analysis highlight this and points towards this weekend’s racing being the most competitive yet.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day came from Yamaha and Fabio Quartararo. The Japanese marque has been firmly looking to the future following a recent test of its V4 prior to the Spanish GP. But it can look to the coming races at Jerez in the here and now with some quiet optimism.

Yamaha’s pre-season form suggested we’d be seeing more of what we saw on Friday at Jerez. It hasn’t worked out like that, with Honda surprising everyone with its steep step towards the top half of the timesheets.

Quartararo was on course to set a session-topping lap when he crashed late on in Practice. He recovered to secure a direct place in Q2. After a surprise front row in Qatar, Yamaha and Quartararo will be in the mix on Saturday morning in the time attack shootout. If he can nail that, pace on the medium tyre put him fastest of all at the end of Friday.

This came as some surprise to Quartararo, though. Despite being a double MotoGP winner at Jerez, the hot temperatures lead to low-grip conditions at the Spanish venue. In theory, this should cause problems for Yamaha given its traditional rear traction woes. Understanding why he has the speed he does could, in many ways, truly unlock the rest of the season for Quartararo on the factory M1.

But sometimes, when things are good, it’s best not to question why…