Marc Marquez issues judgement for his “strange” Japan MotoGP Friday

MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez says his “strange” Friday at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix was down to making bike set-up changes “too early” instead of focusing on his riding.

The factory Ducati rider comes to Motegi needing to outscore Alex Marquez by just three points by the end of the round to become the 2025 MotoGP world champion.

But Friday practice proved to be complicated for Marc Marquez, who looked uncomfortable for most of the afternoon session on his GP25.

Though he eventually finished third to advance safely into Q2, he feels he was trying too many different bike set-up tweaks to be able to understand how to adapt to the conditions with his riding style.

“Strange session, strange day,” he said.

“We started FP1 with a not so bad feeling, but it’s true that we did some mistakes in Practice in the afternoon.

“But the feeling changed quite a lot with the bike and the track, and then everything became more difficult.

“But apart from that, let’s see if tomorrow we can improve my riding style and also a bit the bike. But, with the bike, we are inside [Q2].

“Our problem was that we started to try different set-ups too early. And it’s better sometimes to concentrate on my riding style and that’s it.

“But like always, in FP1 I had some problems and the engineers tried to help me.

“Maybe also I was pushing too much for those problems. But let’s see if tomorrow we can improve.

“The most important thing is to find the way. We are not in the last practice. Still we have all of Saturday in front to keep improving. But it looks like a bad day, but we are third. So, not bad.”

He added: “On the last time attack [I improved].

“All the Practice I was there around 10th, 15th. That is not normal.

“But we also understood some riders put the soft rear in quite early. But apart from that, we need to improve. This will be the main target for tomorrow, trying to improve the race pace.”

Marc Marquez’s sole remaining title rival Alex Marquez struggled even more on his Gresini Ducati on Friday, with the latter facing Q1 on Saturday morning in qualifying.

But Marc Marquez is convinced his younger brother will still be able to advance into the pole shootout session.

“As I said, it was a strange day, and it’s not normal that Alex is out in Q1,” he said.

“Also there were a lot of yellow flags in the end, and let’s see. I expect tomorrow he will have enough speed to jump to Q2.

“But we are only on Friday, so quiet, no stress. I want the best for my brother, so I hope he jumps to Q2.”