Czech MotoGP showed even Marc Marquez will have a hard time denying himself 2025 title

As MotoGP heads for a three-week summer break, there won’t be anyone going to the beach expecting anything other than Marc Marquez to be crowned 2025 world champion well before the season reaches its Valencia climax in November.

After 12 rounds, the factory Ducati rider has won eight grands prix, 11 sprints and tallied up eight 37-point weekends to take what is already looking like an unassailable 120-point lead in the championship.

MotoGP hasn’t seen domination like this since Marquez himself was romping to the 2019 title - his sixth in seven years - for Honda. Back then, he’d won seven times after the first 12 rounds of that campaign and was 78 points clear of Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso. And at that point, he was beaten fairly and squarely by Dovi in a thriller in Austria, prior to that by Danilo Petrucci in Italy and by Alex Rins at the British Grand Prix.

If we take just grand prix points into consideration in 2025, Marquez is just four shy of the margin he had at the same stage in 2019 in the pre-sprint era - and that includes having a DNF to his credit at COTA, a 12th-place after a crash at Jerez and damage-limiting run to third at Silverstone. By contrast, in 2019, he only had one DNF.

Of course, the bike he had in 2019 and the one he has now are quite different. But the key change between those periods has been Marquez’s physical condition. In 2025, he is 32 years old and has had to change his riding style to adapt around the serious right arm injury he suffered five years ago at Jerez.

In fact, it was exactly five years to the weekend at Brno when Marquez’s career trajectory changed completely. He marked the occasion with victory in a farcical sprint following a tyre pressure issue, before dominating Sunday’s 21-lap grand prix.

“I bet on me in the end of 2023,” he said after the Czech Grand Prix when asked about his 2020 crash. “I just decided to get the best bike on the grid and tried to understand if it was possible to come back to my best level. And I did. So, yeah, I’m super happy. It’s true that those five years were difficult, but at the same time I grew a lot as a person, in my personal life and in my professional life. And now I’m a bit more mature, more calm.”

He’s also, arguably, a more complete rider. At the summer break, Marquez is on a points-per-round average of 31.75 out of a possible 37 each weekend. That is 10 more than nearest title rival Alex Marquez has managed.

No Ducati rider had won five grands prix in a row until Marc Marquez took the chequered flag last Sunday at Brno. And now no rider looks seriously within any kind of a position to stop what is looking like the inevitable. Alex Marquez, after a pointless weekend at Brno, is 120 adrift and Pecco Bagnaia is even further behind at 168 points back. The next-best rider is Marco Bezzecchi, 225 points behind Marc Marquez.

Nothing is guaranteed. His serious arm injury five years ago attests to that. Some have also brought up 1992 and Mick Doohan, who looked set to ease to a first 500cc title before suffering a horrendous leg injury at Assen.

From that perspective, the final 10 rounds are anything but a write-off. But that’s just it: the only way anyone now stands a chance at beating Marquez is if injury intervenes.

“It’s true that the second part of the season, 10 races to go, a big advantage, and honestly speaking I only can lose. I need to keep the same concentration.”

Marc Marquez was toying with the field at Brno

A crash at the end of qualifying on Saturday, having been caught out by Johann Zarco falling just seconds ahead, denied him a shot at pole - handing a first of 2025 to Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia.

That mattered little in the sprint, however, with Marquez taking the lead at Turn 3 and eventually building a gap of over 2.6s to second place at the start of the sixth lap before handing the lead to KTM’s Pedro Acosta. In scenes similar to the Thai Grand Prix, Marquez was given a tyre pressure warning and needed to use the wake of the KTM to boost his Michelin front’s psi.

He did so and duly overtook him again with ease on the penultimate lap. In the grand prix, he would have to wait until lap eight before he finally hit the front. The plan was to lead from the start, but a hard-charging Marco Bezzecchi on the Aprilia revealed to Marquez that attempting to race him at that stage was too risky.

He knew that as soon as the tyres started to drop initially, that would be when he would come into play. Sure enough, at Turn 3, Marquez passed Bezzecchi, fended off a retaliation into Turn 4 having run slightly wide on the exit of the previous corner and wouldn’t be headed again.

He produced a 1m54.833s compared to Bezzecchi’s 1m55.272s, then a string of low 1m54s to get his gap to over a second at the start of lap 13. From that point on, there was no coming back for anyone. He continued to keep his pace steady, swell his lead to over two seconds at one stage before getting to other chequered flag 1.753s in front of the factory Aprilia.

Marquez’s fastest lap - a 1m53.691s - came on lap 15 of 21. On the final tour, despite his lead having eased somewhat, he fired in a final 1m53.8s. That, he later explained, is how he has been able to avoid a repeat of his COTA crash: he deliberately played with his pace in order to keep his mind focused.

“I mean, of course one of the reasons when I did the mistake in Austin was losing focus,” he said. “Then problem, solution: if you make some mistakes, you have to work on it. I started to work on it and it looks like now I’m able to keep better the concentration that was not something that was a problem in my career. Just sometimes when you have that big advantage it’s difficult to keep the same intensity. But like today, some laps I was pushing more, some laps less, just to keep playing with my mental side - not with the limit of the bike.”

Bezzecchi had designs of pushing as hard as he could early on to lead, but admitted after the race that he knew Marquez had a little bit more than he did and second was going to be the best outcome.

Marquez’s rivals have made his life unnecessarily easy in 2025

Bagnaia’s pole brought with it a whiff of hope that perhaps the old double world champion would provide a much stiffer opposition. He was unfortunate to lose a podium in the sprint due to a fault on his bike wrongly telling him he risked a tyre pressure penalty.

But even then, the win didn’t look likely. And though he led off the line in the grand prix, his usual braking problems sent him down the order again. Some tweaks to his traction control settings allowed a late - but unsuccessful - rally to challenge for the final spot on the podium. But third remains Bagnaia’s absolute best at this stage.

That has been true all season. Only twice has he actually been the lead factory team Ducati: and on both occasions, at COTA and Jerez, team-mate Marc Marquez had crashed.

For the most part, Alex Marquez has been Marc Marquez’s main opponent in races. But his first grand prix off the podium in 2025 - Qatar, when he was sixth - happened on a weekend where his older brother won. In France, Alex Marquez failed to finish while Marc Marquez was second. When the latter was third at Silverstone, Alex Marquez was only fifth. He crashed and fractured a finger in Assen, where his brother won, and came away from Brno with no points for the first time this season.

HIs sprint, like Bagnaia’s, was a bit luckless. Marc Marquez’s visor tear-off had ended up blowing in front of him, before a lot of wheelspinning off the line that plummeted him down the order. But his grand prix retirement was wholly unnecessary. Impatiently putting a move on a slower Joan Mir, Alex Marquez crashed and took the factory Honda with him on lap two of 21. He will have to serve a long lap in Austria, already jeopardising his podium hopes at the Red Bull Ring before the paddock has even arrived to the Styrian hills.

“We are in one of my best moments of my career,” Marc Marquez said on Sunday at Brno. “The feeling is like in 2019 or 2014. I’m riding in a very good way, I’m calm. The races I can manage as I want. But it’s true that we need to keep the same mentality, focus, and I want to say thanks to the team because we cannot forget that this is a new team for me. But the fact that it is a new team makes everything more interesting, this first part of the season, and the margin was there and when we got this perfect connection we started to improve a lot.

“I’m feeling super good with the team, with the bike. I knew what I needed in every moment and this helped to manage a tricky weekend like this one.”

Marc Marquez was already going to be hard to beat this year, but those who should have been his main contenders have made it unnecessarily easy for him to bring himself to the championship lead that he has after Brno.

The recent criticism of some riders, chiefly Alex Marquez, for allegedly not racing Marc Marquez hard enough has been debunked thoroughly now. But if there is a legitimate complaint to be had it is that the likes of Alex Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia simply have not been good enough to put any kind of pressure of Marc Marquez in the opening 12 rounds of 2025.

The 32-year-old has clearly learned from his early-season errors, has improved himself to be able to come through weak weekends with maximum damage inflicted and at no point since a weird British Grand Prix in May has he looked beatable.

Aprilia could provide some fireworks in the second half of the season

Away from the title battle, Ducati didn’t actually have a very good Czech Grand Prix. Marc Marquez ensured its podium run extends to 78 successive races, but only two Desmosedicis were classified inside the top 10 (Fermin Aldeguer was eighth, but was demoted to 11th due to a post-race penalty).

Obvious questions about Ducati’s dominance in 2025 have arisen from this, but hitting the panic button yet would be a little premature.

But Ducati will have to start keeping one eye behind as fellow Italian brand Aprilia now legitimately looks like it is making strides forward to be in a position to fight for race wins on the regular. Marco Bezzecchi was solid all weekend, qualifying in fourth and finishing there in the sprint after early contact with Fabio Quartararo forced him into a recovery ride.

He then led the first seven laps of the grand prix before ultimately finishing second to Marquez. But he had KTM’s Pedro Acosta easily covered and early on proved out of Bagnaia’s reach in terms of pace.

Aprilia now has a victory and two grand prix podiums to its credit since the end of May, and could well have had a third in Germany had Bezzecchi not crashed out of the attritional main race. Its second in the standings is not strong, KTM is only 12 points behind it. But consistency in form is more evident for Aprilia than it is KTM.

Bezzecchi deserves a lot of credit for his Czech Grand Prix. Though Marquez had him covered, his average pace was just 0.094s per lap slower. He set his best lap, a 1m53.894s, on the final tour, which was considerably better than Acosta’s (1m54.128s) behind.

Aprilia had three bikes in the top 10, with Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez fifth and the returning world champion Jorge Martin a “special” seventh.

Martin did what he had to do last weekend, which was simply get miles on the RS-GP and get through the round unscathed. He did so, bagging a direct Q2 spot on Friday - before qualifying 12th - and then taking a decent haul of points in the grand prix. At the chequered flag he was a very respectable 15.8s behind Marc Marquez - having competed in just two full weekends to this point.

His average pace to the leader was 0.604s per lap slower, so not close - but not a bad starting point. To his team-mate Bezzecchi, it was 0.510s per lap slower. If that is the starting point for a rider who missed all of pre-season testing and 10 of the 12 rounds of 2025 so far, Aprilia should head into the summer break with a big smile on its face.

Marquez is now in a position where he can very much control his championship lead, even if he isn’t approaching the second half of the campaign with that mindset. But if Aprilia keeps up the momentum it has, it is threatening to give Marquez and Ducati something to think about in the final 10 rounds…