The “two points” Alex Marquez “needs to improve” in MotoGP 2025 identified

After a tough end to the first part of the 2025 MotoGP season, Alex Marquez is sure of where he needs to improve in the remainder of this season as he seeks to maintain control of a top-three position in the riders’ standings.

Marquez arrives in Austria still second in the standings after what was comfortably his best half-season in the premier class, but having scored no points in Brno, where a bad qualifying was followed by a poor start in the Sprint, and then a crash with Joan Mir in the grand prix, for which the Gresini Racing rider received a long lap penalty for the Austrian race.

The Spanish rider says there was good fortune in the timing of what was his worst race of 2025 so far.

“After a bad weekend you have either a race next week or you have a summer break – luckily I had a summer break,” Alex Marquez told MotoGP.com ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix.

“I said ‘Okay, time to disconnect, time to analyse’.

“I didn’t think a lot on how was our first part of the season, I was thinking a little bit more about how can be our second part of the season, in which points we need to improve, in which areas we need to be a little bit more focused.

“So, it will be important to come back in a good mood, try to have a good feeling again on the bike, and try – more than results – to have a good feeling.

“This will be the most important thing for us to start this second part of the season and these two races that will be in a row, Austria and Hungary, and will be important for us.”

Expanding on the areas he feels he needs to improve in the second half of the season, Marquez said that the experience he had in Brno showed that he has a weakness when he finds himself in a group further back in the order, and that he is not as strong as either Marc Marquez or Francesco Bagnaia in braking.

“First of all, the points that Marc [Marquez] or Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia] are faster than me is braking and entry,” Marquez said.

“It’s the point that normally I’ve been struggling more – this year less, but it’s still one step that we need to do.

“Later on, when we are a little bit more back than usual, like happened in Brno, try to control a little bit more our way, the motivation on that point to try to make the overtakes in a better way and try to not make the things too fast because then I did mistakes.

“These are the two points that we need to improve and it will be important here to have the focus to improve in different areas.”

A weakness in corner entry is not likely to lend itself to strong results at a circuit like the Red Bull Ring, which is renowned for its stop-start characteristics.

Perhaps understandably, then, Marquez, whose only podium finishes at the Austrian venue came in the 2017 and 2019 Moto2 races, does not count the Red Bull Ring among his favourites on the MotoGP calendar.

“It’s not one of my favourite layouts,” he said.

“It’s one of my favourite places, where it’s based, the track, and all that. But the layout is not my favourite one.

“We have here many entry and braking points and it’s where normally I’m struggling more, but in 2023 (Marquez finished fifth that year) I was quite fast here.

“So, I will try to be there, to make a constant weekend, to try to the long lap for Sunday and to train that to make in a good way. From that point, try to make a solid weekend.”