The unanswered questions from Marc Marquez’s MotoGP season-skewing surgery

Marc Marquez’s declaration that he was due to have more surgery on the shoulder he injured last October came as little surprise in the context of his 2026 season. While Ducati is clearly a step behind Aprilia right now, the GP26 showed potential enough to be a competitive motorcycle. Certainly, in the hands of a fully fit Marc Marquez - based on what he did in 2025 - this was still a bike to contend for the title with.

But since pre-season testing, the reigning world champion has just been off. Only returning to bike training a few weeks before testing began, it was evident he would start the campaign below full fitness.

Thailand marked a solid starting point, though. He was on for a sprint win before a controversial finale, and was set to finish at least third in the grand prix before suffering a bizarre rear wheel failure. He won the sprint in Brazil and was narrowly off the podium in fourth, doing so at a right-handed circuit that was always set to conspire against his recovering right shoulder.

The first warning signs that something was really up came in Austin. At a circuit he has ruled at throughout his MotoGP career, at no point did he look like a rider capable of winning.

The Spanish Grand Prix suggested something of a reset. He won the sprint in sensational fashion after crashing on slick tyres when it was raining and switched to his wet bike by way of a pitlane entry tactic that has now been shut down by the regulators. He was in the lead battle early in the grand prix when he crashed out of second on Sunday.

That crash had done big damage to his championship hopes, casting him 44 points adrift. But with the GP26 winning in Alex Marquez’s hands, and a promising test for Ducati on the Monday, everything was pointing in the direction of Marc Marquez being more competitive.

But that wasn’t the case at Le Mans. He was out of Q2 after Friday’s practices, was around half a second a lap slower than the best race pace, and was struggling with the front-end of the GP26. Then he set a new lap record to top Q1, before missing pole by just 0.011s in Q2.

“I’m in a moment where I don’t understand how I’m riding. And it’s a problem,” he said after qualifying.

Marquez’s feedback about the Ducati up to that point had always given off a sense that he was hiding something. That finally saw the light of day after a frightening highside out of seventh during the sprint at the French Grand Prix.

A fracture to his right foot ruled him out of Sunday’s race and the Catalan Grand Prix, with Marquez then revealing to the world that he was also originally due to have surgery on his right shoulder after Barcelona. That had been brought forward to Sunday, when he also had his foot operated on.

The crash at the Spanish Grand Prix left him with an odd feeling in his arm, which was later revealed to be a damaged screw pinching his radial nerve. Suddenly, the lack of consistency in his riding made sense. It was something Marquez had been keeping to himself, but which had clearly been weighing on him.

“I already told you that I was not ready to fight for the championship,” he said at Le Mans on Saturday after the crash.

“I knew, and I didn’t say anything because I don’t like to cry in front of microphones. But, just I tried to work in my garage, tried to work on myself, tried to convince myself. But when you have a physical problem, you have a physical problem; you cannot do anything. It’s there where I need to take a rest. As I showed in Q1, I can be fast because I know how to ride these bikes. But as I showed [in the sprint] also, I can make stupid mistakes without knowing what’s going on because when something is touching the nerve, the arm is not doing what you want it to do.”

What next for Marquez’s title hopes, and his future?

There is still a long way to go in this season. But after the French Grand Prix, Marquez is now 71 points down on championship leader Marco Bezzecchi, who was second last Sunday behind Aprilia team-mate Jorge Martin.

If Bezzecchi goes to Barcelona and wins both races, Marquez could well end up 108 points down on Bezzecchi by the time he returns at the Italian Grand Prix - if that is when he does stage his comeback.

Stranger things have, of course, happened. Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia overturned a 91-point mid-season deficit to beat Fabio Quartararo in the 2022 standings. But Bagnaia was not going up against an opponent with as formidable a bike as the Aprilia is right now.

Mathematically, Marquez remains a combatant. But realistically, an eighth world title will have to wait until 2027. And there lies the next question: will we even see Marquez on the grid next year?

The ongoing struggles with his shoulder have led some to question his future. Paddock rumblings are that Marquez has already signed on with Ducati for two more years. The toll injuries take on a rider is unpredictable, however. Dani Pedrosa had an option to continue in MotoGP into 2019 with Petronas SRT, but elected to retire instead, given the beating his body had taken over the years.

Marquez has endured a lot of punishment in his pursuit of greatness. If he did decide to call it quits at the end of 2026, it would be fully understandable.

But talk of retirement at this stage is catastrophising. Now that he knows what the issue is, something has been able to be done about it. Though life is never as simple, in theory, he should be able to return to a better level of riding. At Jerez, he noted that his training in the gym had increased, while he has maintained his motocross riding; ironically, the shoulder issue never showed itself there.

His Q1 lap will act as his reference for what he is capable of. Even below fitness and carrying an injury that made each lap unpredictable, he pulled out something that couldn’t be matched by anyone in the following Q2 session. When his back is against the wall, he can still swing.

With the championship all but gone, he is under no pressure to return. Ducati’s Davide Tardozzi said as much in France, noting: “We couldn't agree more on this: his health remains the priority.”

Given that Marquez and Ducati knew what the situation was with his shoulder after the Spanish Grand Prix, it does raise the question of why defer surgery until after the Catalan Grand Prix?

Repeatedly stating that he was too slow to think about fighting for the title, it’s hard to fathom why he wasn’t benched for the French Grand Prix to have surgery after Jerez and begin the process earlier. By continuing, there was the risk of another crash, which ultimately came to pass in the sprint in France. He came away with a minor injury there, but the risk of something greater was omnipresent.

Had the surgery happened earlier, he may well have been able to race in Barcelona and take part in the post-race test, which is important to Ducati. As he said, “I tried to convince myself”. This is a rider who went through surgery on a broken arm and then rode his Honda just a few days later six years ago. Riders need to be told no sometimes, for their own sakes.

In hindsight, it would be easy to point to the April break as the ideal time to get this sorted. But the true problem didn’t reveal itself until he crashed out of the Spanish Grand Prix, while both he and Ducati will have (understandably) looked at the extra weeks’ rest as perfect recovery time.

Still, at this stage, with limited information from Marquez or Ducati, the decision to keep racing in France and Barcelona prior to his foot injury is perplexing.

What does Ducati do now?

Marquez’s absence from Le Mans and Barcelona, and possibly even Mugello, complicates Ducati’s already difficult season. As stated above, it’s evident that the GP26 package is solid enough to run at the front of the field.

But, at this stage, not consistently. Marquez somewhat outrode the package relative to his counterparts in Thailand, while two sprint wins and some ace qualifying performances show there is pace in the bike. Fabio Di Giannantonio was fast in Brazil, Austin and Jerez, but never factored in the podium battle at Le Mans.

Alex Marquez was in complete control of the Spanish Grand Prix, but has been anonymous either side of it. Pecco Bagnaia was on pole at Le Mans and has three successive sprint podiums. But in the French Grand Prix, he crashed out of second and was under threat of losing out on a podium altogether given how quick Jorge Martin and Ai Ogura were on the Aprilias.

As was the case last year with the consistency of the GP25, only Marc Marquez was able to put it onto the rostrum on a weekly basis.

Aprilia’s position as the reference manufacturer is undeniable at this stage. Jorge Martin’s performance at Le Mans has heralded the Spaniard as a genuine title threat, while a bad weekend for Bezzecchi remains a runner-up spot on a Sunday, as well as a first sprint podium of the season.

And Ai Ogura is proof that Aprilia is capable of locking out the podium.

Ducati’s best rider in the standings right now is Di Giannantonio, who crashed out of the Le Mans sprint and was its leading rider in fourth in the grand prix, some two seconds off the podium. But he is already 43 points down on Bezzecchi at the top of the standings.

Then it’s Marc Marquez, 71 points back, followed by Alex Marquez 73 adrift. Pecco Bagnaia is 85 points down on Bezzecchi.

The riders’ title looks like it’s quickly becoming out of the question for Ducati. At 34 points down in the constructors’ standings, that seems like a more realistic prospect. That is the championship that matters most to the brand. But the lack of consistency is doing it no favours.

Getting Marc Marquez back at full fitness (if that is indeed what happens) is paramount to Ducati understanding truly what the GP26 is capable of. If, fully fit, Marquez finds the same struggles as his colleagues, Ducati either has to dig deeper if it wants to retain its manufacturers’ crown, or write off 2026 altogether and focus resources fully on the 2027 850cc project.

Without understanding if the GP26 is a genuinely good bike or not, however, it can’t hope to switch development focus fully to the 2027 project and be confident of avoiding the same issues.