How Marc Marquez can win the 2025 MotoGP title at the Japanese Grand Prix

Marc Marquez comes into this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi with his first opportunity to win the 2025 MotoGP world championship and his first with Ducati.

The 2023 Japanese Grand Prix represents the 32-year-old’s final main race podium with the factory Honda squad. A few days later, he announced he would be leaving to join Gresini Ducati in a bid to rebuild his stalled career.

Two years on from that moment, Marc Marquez has a chance to come full circle as he returns to the Japanese Grand Prix in 2025 with the factory Ducati squad facing his first match point in the title race.

Marc Marquez can win his seventh premier class world title this weekend, drawing him level with Valentino Rossi, as well as his ninth across all classes - again, putting him level with the Italian legend. 

After the San Marino Grand Prix, in which he beat Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi to an 11th win of the season, Marquez leads the championship by 182 points from Gresini’s Alex Marquez.

Mathematically, only one of the Marquez brothers can now win the 2025 world title.

Marc Marquez cannot win the championship in the sprint, so must end the weekend with a gap of 185 points to his younger brother.

The permutations for that are many, but the most simple is this: across both races, Marc Marquez must outscore Alex Marquez by just three points to move out of reach in the standings.

Should the points gap stay as it is after the sprint, a win for Marc Marquez would seal the deal regardless of where Alex Marquez finishes.

How many world titles has Marc Marquez won in Japan?

Motegi has been a happy hunting ground for Marc Marquez over the years in his title winning years.

He won his 2014 title on Honda’s home soil and did so again in 2016. After being pushed to the final round of 2017 against Andrea Dovizioso, Marquez won the 2018 title in Japan.

The Japanese Grand Prix was also the scene of Ducati’s first world title with Casey Stoner in 2007, as it brought to an end years of dominance by Honda and Yamaha in the modern era.

Why Marc Marquez won’t want the championship to continue to Indonesia

Should Alex Marquez prove able to keep Marc Marquez’s points gap underneath the 185-point threshold for the factory Ducati rider to win the title in Japan, it will roll on to next weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix.

From Indonesia, there will be 185 points left on the table. So, a title win there would almost certainly be a formality for Marc Marquez.

However, Mandalika has not been a good venue for the 32-year-old since it joined the calendar in 2022.

He missed the first Indonesian Grand Prix staged there after a heavy crash in warm-up left him battling a recurring double vision issue.

In 2023, he crashed out of both the sprint and the grand prix, while last year he suffered a mechanical issue in the main race having finished third in the sprint.