Fabled Valentino Rossi MotoGP record teetering under pressure from Marc Marquez

Marc Marquez has utterly dominated MotoGP in 2025, with a 120-point lead, eight grand prix wins and 11 Sprint wins from 12 events, but where could his present form leave the Spanish veteran by the end of the 2026 season when his current contract with the Ducati Lenovo Team will expire?

Every series has its elite historical figures. Motocross has Ricky Carmichael in the US and Stefan Everts in Europe; Supercross has Jeremy McGrath; the World Rally Championship has Sebastien Loeb; and Formula One has Michael Schumacher.

Some of these legends continue to stand out above the pilots that now contest the events and championships they once dominated – Loeb, for example, still has the WRC records for wins and titles, and the records of McGrath and Carmichael in AMA Supercross and Pro Motocross, respectively, remain unchallenged at least for now.

But others have been surpassed.

Lewis Hamilton now holds the F1 win record and shares the record for titles with Schumacher, and Stefan Everts’ victory tally in the Motocross World Championship has been overtaken by Jeffrey Herlings who has amassed a tally of 109 wins.

Valentino Rossi may cling onto MotoGP podium record

MotoGP presently sits in the category with American supercross and motocross with its historic records - held predominantly by nine-time World Champion Valentino Rossi and 15-time World Champion Giacomo Agostini - still to be broken; but it also now stands on the edge of their fall.

The dominance of Marc Marquez in the 2025 MotoGP season took time to settle in, but it is now overwhelming. The Spanish rider has won all but one of the 12 Sprints so far this year and has taken eight grand prix wins, too, with podium finishes in two of the four races he was unable to win.

His points lead ahead of the resumption of the season at the Red Bull Ring – where victory at this weekend’s (15–17 August) Austrian Grand Prix would be his first at the track – is 120 over his brother, Alex Marquez, and he has arrived at this point with what feels like vastly greater command over the series than he had even in the peak of his time at HRC.

In terms of percentages, Marquez has won 66.7 per cent of the grands prix so far this year and has stood on the podium in 83.3 per cent of them. Pole positions, which Marquez has taken seven of this year so far, are essentially irrelevant for this discussion, because the Spanish rider is already top of the all-time list with 101 in all classes.

Currently third all-time in overall wins and second for podium finishes in all classes, where could dominance like that displayed so far by Marquez in 2025 lead him by the end of his current contract with the Ducati Lenovo Team at the end of the 2026 season?

There are 10 races remaining in 2025. Keeping that 83.3 per cent podium rate would see Marquez on the podium eight more times this year, putting him onto 168 by the end of 2025.

With 22 races coming up in 2026, at least per the recently published provisional calendar, it would be impossible for Marquez to overhaul Valentino Rossi on the podium finishes list. Rossi has 235 at present, so even if Marquez gets to 170 by the end of 2025 he would be needing a 100 per cent podium record for three seasons to surpass the Italian – not impossible, but even for Marquez that seems unlikely, and would require an increase in his performance and consistency in his mid-30s, and for that increase to be sustained over a substantial period of time.

If Marquez were to maintain his 83.3 per cent podium finish rate into and through the 2026 season, he would increase his podium tally by another 18, putting him on 186 by the end of next season.

In terms of the premier class, the 26 podiums Marquez would achieve by the end of next year by maintaining the same top-three rate as the first half of this season would also leave him still over 50 podiums behind Rossi’s record of 199.

Marc Marquez could break Valentino Rossi records

The victory chart is more interesting for Marquez, though. Currently on 96 wins, maintaining his 66.7 per cent win rate from the first half of the season until the end of the year would therefore add seven more wins to his victory tally, pushing him through the 100-win barrier and onto 103.

Carrying that win rate through the end of next season would leave Marquez at the end of his second season as a factory Ducati rider with another 15 wins, putting him on 118 in all classes and 92 in the premier class – three clear of Rossi in both lists since they share the tally of 34 wins in the lightweight and intermediate categories.

That would still leave Marquez four shy of Agostini’s 122 in all classes ahead of the 2027 season – the first year of 850cc regulations and Pirelli tyres, and by which time Marquez will be 34.

Of course, it’s all good looking at numbers from the past and using them to know what will happen in the future.

But, as predictable as Marquez has made MotoGP in 2025, there is also no better example than his own career of that, in racing, nothing is certain.

Marquez’s dominance will not last forever, it might not even last until the end of the season as hard as that is to presently imagine.

But of late it has been absolute and enough to revive his possibilities to become the most victorious rider in the sport’s history. Even if it does tail off between now and the end of 2026, it has been impressive for a rider to return to their peak, or at least close to it, five years after an injury which almost ended his career and at the age of 32.

Wherever Marquez ends up statistically, this short period of his career has arguably cemented his legacy as one of the most determined, focused, and committed athletes in motorcycle racing history.