Marc Marquez recalls famous Brno 2019 MotoGP pole lap: ‘That guy is crazy!’

Marc Marquez says he was “crazy” after watching back his famous pole lap from the 2019 MotoGP Czech Grand Prix as the series returns to Brno this weekend.

After a five-year absence, MotoGP will host its first Czech Grand Prix at the iconic Brno circuit this weekend.

Marc Marquez is a three-time winner of the event when it previously featured on the calendar, including his last visit to the venue in 2019.

While he would win that grand prix, it was his pole lap from the day before that has gone down in history as one of the eight-time world champion’s best moments of his MotoGP career.

Qualifying that year was run in changeable conditions, but the circuit had dried to a point where slick tyres could be used.

Having gone fastest with his penultimate lap, Marquez pushed hard on his final tour but came across a final sector completely wet as the rain picked up again.

But the then-Honda rider kept it pinned through the final sequence of corners and produced a 2m02.753s lap that put him on pole by 2.524s.

Afterwards, then-Ducati rider Danilo Petrucci joked to the media how he couldn’t understand why the circuit was dry for Marquez and wet for everyone else.

It is a lap that has picked up traction on social media over the last few days ahead of MotoGP’s return to Brno.

Giving his thoughts on it now, six years later, Marquez branded it one his “best” poles but admits he’s not likely to now have the mindset to repeat it.

“The first thought is ‘this guy is crazy’, riding on that sector four with the slick tyres,” he told motogp.com.

“It’s something that now [if it happened] maybe I will close the throttle a bit more.

“But it’s one of the best pole positions I did, for the way we did it for those slick tyres in rain conditions in that last sector.”

Marquez topped the opening session of the 2025 Czech Grand Prix at Brno on Friday in changeable conditions on his factory Ducati despite suffering technical issues early on.