Marc Marquez’s brutal British MotoGP sprint assessment: “I am the problem”

MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez admits he is “struggling” at the British Grand Prix and says “I am the problem”, after finishing a distant second in the sprint.

Having won six consecutive sprints in 2025, Marc Marquez was expected to continue that run on Saturday at Silverstone having also shown good long run pace in practice on Friday.

But a tricky qualifying saw him miss the front row for the first time this year, while in the 10-lap sprint he couldn’t overhaul eventual winner Alex Marquez after losing the lead to him on the second tour due to a mistake at Village corner.

Marc Marquez was 3.5s away from Alex Marquez at the chequered flag and has seen his points lead reduced slightly to 19 heading into Sunday’s grand prix.

The factory Ducati riders says Saturday’s sprint was a race not to gain anything as he was struggling, which he blames on himself having been unable to find anything from various bike set-ups.

“Today was that kind of day that I started the race thinking about not losing too much, not gaining - just not losing - because I’m struggling,” he said on Saturday at Silverstone.

“I don’t know why. We changed the bike a lot during all the weekend, but you always start in one point, you start do things and then you come back to the same point.

“So, I was struggling.

“When you are trying a lot of set-ups and you don’t feel comfortable, it means you are the problem; the bike is not the problem, because this is something that some riders misunderstand.

“When you try three, four different set-ups and the problems are still there, it means you are the problem, the bike is not the problem.

“So, for tomorrow I need to work on my riding style.”

Marquez added that he hasn’t been able to extract much from the soft rear across Saturday’s running, but was more confident on the medium rear on Friday, which he believes will be the Sunday race option.

However, he warned that Alex Marquez will still be faster than him.

“Will be interesting to understand where we are with the medium rear tyre because Friday with the medium I felt super good,” he said.

“And since we put the soft on, it’s when we started to struggle.

“Today we ran the soft always, so I want to understand what we can do with the medium rear.

“And then from that point, the front tomorrow, everybody needs to go with the medium because the soft didn’t finish the race, and wait.

“But Alex is faster here. He was already the fastest here in 2023, but he had a mechanical problem, and again one more time this year he’s the fastest.

“And last year this was one of the races he finished closer to me. So it means he is riding in a very good way.”

2020 injury has weakened an already weak Silverstone area for Marc Marquez

Marquez noted on Friday after practice that Alex Marquez was faster than all Ducatis through the fast, long right at Woodcote.

As the pair rain line astern in the first half of the sprint, it was here where Gresini’s Alex Marquez was able to open up a gap on his elder brother.

Marc Marquez denies this was down to the GP24 working better than the factory-spec bike - which he claims is the same, even if Ducati management have said otherwise - and revealed that it was a weak area for him already that has gotten worse since he broke his arm in 2020.

“We are riding with the GP24, so we are riding with exactly the same bike as Alex,” he said when crash.net asked him why Alex Marquez was so fast at Woodcote.

“So, the bike is not the problem.

“It’s true that the way he is riding in those corners is different and he’s taking a lot the profit of the tyre.

“And he’s doing a lot of metres. Together, that is my weak point, but I cannot improve there.

“It was already my weak point a bit, but since my injury I struggle even more there on those long right corners to control everything. But I have other strong points, so let’s take profit from that."