What would MotoGP 2025 look like without sprint races?

The 2025 MotoGP world champion has reached its halfway stage and Marc Marquez looks well on course to score a seventh premier class title this year.

At the summer break, 12 rounds have been run so far for a maximum of 444 points combining sprints (12 points for a win) and grands prix (25 points for a win).

Marc Marquez leads the championship with 381 points, representing 85.8% of the total points on offer. The factory Ducati rider has won eight grands prix in 2025 and 11 sprints, with eight of his weekends seeing him score the maximum 37 points.

This is a record in the modern sprint era, as is his number of sprint wins this year, while eight Sunday victories represent his highest tally since his most recent title winning season in 2019 - when he won 12 grands prix out of 19.

The most grands prix Marquez has won in a single season is 13, which came in 2014 in his second year in the premier class.

His Czech Grand Prix win prior to the summer break in 2025 marked his fifth in succession, making him the first Ducati rider in history to do this. The most wins he’s ever scored in succession is 10, which was again in 2014.

At the summer break, Marc Marquez holds a 120-point lead in the championship over second-placed Alex Marquez on the Gresini-run 2024-spec Ducati.

Alex Marquez has scored one grand prix victory and one sprint win in 2025, with his points haul standing at 261 - 58.7% of the 444 maximum from the opening 12 rounds.

Battle for second much tighter without sprint points in MotoGP 2025

The sprint era of MotoGP is in its third year and has now become part of the furniture. Last year’s championship battle between Pecco Bagnaia and

Jorge Martin proved how important the 12-point half-distance races can be to a rider’s title hopes.

Bagnaia won 11 grands prix - the most for a rider in a season since Marc Marquez managed 12 in 2019 - but lost the championship by 10 points due to eight non-scores.

Martin, by contrast, won just three grands prix but was far more consistent across race weekends. Just three times did he score less than 20 points during a race weekend in 2024, while Bagnaia did so on six occasions.

For Marc Marquez in 2025, he has won all but one sprint and was second in the other (at the British Grand Prix). In grands prix, he failed to finish at COTA after a crash; was 12th at Jerez after falling out of the podium and was third at a tricky Silverstone race. Those Saturday results early season are what ultimately stopped his championship deficit after COTA and Jerez from being more than just a single point.

That said, remove sprint points from the equation, and Marquez remains dominant after the first half of the 2025 campaign.

On grand prix points alone, he has taken 240 out of a possible 300 - or 80% of the maximum Sunday points on offer. That gives him a 74-point advantage over Alex Marquez, who has scored 166 points (55.3% of the maximum).

To contextualise this, Marc Marquez was 78 points clear in the standings of Andrea Dovizioso at the same stage of his dominant 2019 campaign - in which he suffered just one DNF and was either first or second in the other 11 events.

Read more: The concession rankings in MotoGP at the halfway stage of 2025

The battle for second is more intriguing without sprint points. With a win apiece in 2025 on Sundays and a pointless weekend at Brno to his name, Alex Marquez would be just a single point clear of Pecco Bagnaia in the standings.

Currently, they are split by 48 points after 12 rounds. Sprints have definitely helped Alex Marquez maintain an advantage over Bagnaia, who has struggled for pace in the half-distance races on the smaller fuel tank he has to use mandated by the rules.

Alex Marquez has 10 podiums in the sprints, including a win at Silverstone, as well as a grand prix win at Jerez and seven other runner-up spots. Bagnaia has five third-place finishes in sprints and three non-scores to Alex Marquez’s one.

But six grands prix podiums and a win at COTA, as well as three fourth-place finishes make up for his back-to-back non-scores in France and Britain if we remove sprint points from the standings.

Marco Bezzecchi, with his Silverstone victory and seconds at Assen and Brno, keep the Aprilia rider fourth in the rankings on grand prix points at 115 while Franco Morbidelli improves a place to fifth on 102 ahead of KTM’s Pedro Acosta on 98, VR46’s second rider Fabio Di Giannantonio on 92, LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco - who won at Le Mans - on 89, Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo on 69 and Gresini rookie Fermin Aldeguer on 68.

What would MotoGP 2025 look like if just sprints counted?

A maximum of 144 points have been up for grabs on Saturday this year. And Marc Marquez has scored 141 of them - or 97.9% of the total.

This would give Marc Marquez a lead of 46 points over Alex Marquez if only sprint points counted this season, with the Gresini rider having taken 95 of the total 144 (65.9%). There is then another massive gap to third-placed Fabio Di Giannantonio, who has scored 50 this season.

Bagnaia slips to fourth in the standings on 49 points, putting him 92 adrift of his Ducati team-mate. That equates to a share of just 34.03% of the maximum sprint points available. Marco Bezzecchi would be fifth on 41 points for Aprilia.

Such has been Marc Marquez’s dominance of Saturdays in 2025, his 141 points alone would put him sixth in the current standings - a point behind Di Giannantonio on 142, and two clear of his VR46 team-mate Franco Morbidelli.