Marc Marquez’s rivals will be praying for rain at the German MotoGP

For quite a few, this weekend has already been written off as a mere formality in a 2025 MotoGP season being increasingly dominated by Marc Marquez. If there’s one circuit where you’d expect the 32-year-old to win at, it’s the Sachsenring. Between 2013 and 2021, Marquez was an unstoppable force at the German Grand Prix venue.

Flag-to-flag races, hard pushes from strong rivals, even a right arm that didn’t work very well - Marquez absorbed them all at the Sachsenring to still stand on the top step of the podium. Fair enough, then, that in a season where he has won nine out of 10 sprints and six grands prix, that he comes to Germany as an overwhelming favourite.

But you’d have also expected him to win at the Circuit of the Americas. And that didn’t happen. And at the Spanish Grand Prix, all signs pointed towards him delighting the home crowd. But that didn’t happen either.

Branding anything in sport as a formality is always a foolish endeavour.

And at the end of Friday at the Sachsenring, the scoresheet doesn’t quite read as expected. Though he was fastest in FP1, and quite comfortably when you consider the fact he didn’t fit new tyres and the four riders behind did, he was only third at the end of the hour-long Practice.

That honour went to VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, who put in an impressive 1m19.071s to set a new all-time lap record. Alex Marquez was similarly impressive in second on the Gresini Ducati, as he too dipped into lap record territory despite still carrying the after-effects of a fractured left hand from his Dutch Grand Prix crash.

Marc Marquez was only third at the chequered flag, 0.390s off the pace. That came after a relatively scrappy moment with around 20 minutes to go, when he lost the rear of his Ducati going through Turn 10 while on the medium rear, before running into the gravel at Turn 1 - seemingly reacting to a late yellow flag for the first of Fermin Aldeguer’s two crashes in the session.

Marquez completed a soft tyre time attack to reach a best of 1m19.461s and promptly switched to a medium rear for his final laps to carry out a little more data gathering. Often when it comes to Marquez, looks can be deceiving. Scratch away at the surface into the long running pace and you see a different story - one closer to the pre-round narrative of unbridled dominance.

Rain looks to be the only leveller against Marc Marquez in Germany

As Europe basks in a heatwave and chemists across Manchester brace for the hoards of Oasis fans to raid them of all sun cream, Sachsenring is facing quite the opposite forecast. Rain is set to hit the circuit for all of Saturday’s running, while the grand prix is currently forecast to be run in dry conditions.

That very much conditioned Marquez’s decision against a final glory run in Practice on Friday afternoon. It took him three laps at the start of the session to produce the 1m19.812s that would be the reference for quite some time. And he instantly went fastest on his first lap of his fourth run in the session on fresh softs, with his second effort the 1m19.461s that cement third.

Clearly, the lap time is there and it’s not going to take very much for him to find it, even if he thought “the feeling wasn’t perfect”. But with Practice potentially the last dry running until the 30-lap grand prix on Sunday, he felt five final laps on a six-lap-old medium rear would be more beneficial to him.

Sachsenring is a tough track to overtake around, but Marquez proved last year that it is possible when he came from 13th to second. If his “not perfect” time attack form this year is third at worst, that’s confidence to worry his rivals.

His race running in Practice will only heighten that.

(*run lengths exclude cancelled and non-representative slow laps)

Marquez worked with both tyres, with his pace on medium rubber across a representative four-lap stint 1m20.472s on average. His soft tyre running over six representative laps worked out at 1m20.477s. The soft will be the sprint choice if it’s not wet, while the medium was the grand prix option last year.

Di Giannantonio, by contrast, spent his time on the soft rear. He did a 10-lap representative run, with 15 laps on the tyre by the time he was finished with it. His pace was good, at 1m20.924s, but just shy of four tenths per laps down on what Marquez is projecting. Alex Marquez’s medium tyre pace suggests he may have a little extra to move in front of Di Giannantonio - though fitness through the race distance remains his big question mark.

On current projections, nobody is really very close to Marc Marquez. So, at present, rain looks to be their best hope of closing the gap. The only wet race we had this year at Le Mans saw Honda dominate with Johann Zarco, as Marc Marquez elected to play the cautious game and come away with a decent 20-point haul.

With a 68-point lead in the championship, Marquez has a lot of room to play with and can therefore calculate his strategy much more. That brings to mind Assen 2016, when he let a first-time winner in Jack Miller sail away as his rivals struggled behind him. Ultimately, not winning in Germany won’t matter if he is crowned champion at the end of the year.

If Saturday is to be the only wet day, it adds another safety net for Marquez when pondering risk over reward because only 12 points are up for grabs.

“Saturday looks like it will be a tricky day, especially with the rain conditions,” he told TNT Sports. “First, we need to understand the championship situation. We need to understand that next week we have another race. So what do I mean? I need to take risks. But inside the limits. You can crash, always you can crash. In rain conditions it is super difficult to manage the limit. But I will try to find the perfect feeling with the bike.”

There is a sense, then, that Saturday is a day to survive for Marquez and Sunday is when he can go back to pushing. Armed with the knowledge of the tyres that he has, there looks to be only one outcome from that.

Battle for final podium places looks as tight as Sachsenring’s layout

The battle to best of the rest behind Ducati in the manufacturers’ table is one that has ebbed and flowed all year, with Aprilia, Honda, Yamaha and KTM all taking turns at some stage in grabbing big results.

Aprilia comes to Germany second in the standings and looking like the most consistent of those other brands. Marco Bezzecchi’s Silverstone win and podium three rounds later at Assen hint at a project finding that long-awaited next step.

Where he shakes out remains to be seen because he crashed early in Practice while on a used medium tyre. That forced a change of run plan to use the soft. And that’s a shame, because the medium he started the session on was already six laps old and late-race pace has been something Bezzecchi has been able to exploit to his advantage this year.

Pecco Bagnaia’s soft tyre pace was good as he did some chassis back-to-backs on his factory Ducati. The new version he tried is an alternate one from 2024 that was never raced, and isn’t likely to do so this weekend as he felt it moved too much on the front end. That said, he does see it as the direction to follow for the future.

Overall, Bagnaia was happy with his day as he continues to find what he needs to start delivering the results the double world champion is capable of. But we’ve heard plenty of positive comments come from the Bagnaia camp after Fridays only for the rest of the weekend to play out in a disappointing fashion.

KTM enjoyed a strong day, with Pedro Acosta regularly a bother at the front of the field on Friday. His medium tyre long run pace is competitive, but needing probably a little more to be a genuine podium contender. That is true of the Yamahas also, with Fabio Quartararo still looking for grip when the tyres are new to avoid the pole slump he suffered at Assen.