‘I think it’s magic’: Alex Marquez has ‘no answer’ for his Jerez MotoGP win

Gresini Ducati MotoGP rider Alex Marquez admits “I don’t have an answer” for why he dominated the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez on Sunday.

The 2025 championship runner-up brushed off suggestions he could repeat his Spanish Grand Prix success from last year, following a difficult start to the new campaign on Ducati’s GP26.

But Alex Marquez ended Friday with the best race pace and converted fifth on the grid to the lead midway through lap two of 25 in Sunday’s grand prix.

The Gresini rider eased to his and Ducati’s first win of the 2026 season by almost two seconds from Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi, but is still somewhat confused as to where this pace came from.

“What happened? Good question,” he said.

“I don’t have the answers. I think it’s something magic, Jerez. From the Friday, I was flying. I don’t know why, honestly.

“We need to analyse to see what happened compared to the first three races at the beginning of the season.

“But anyway, I think I rode over the problems, just thinking on the positive things, just pushing with the team and with the Ducati over the problems, and just focusing on the positive things.

“I extracted the positive things, which this bike has many, but we were not able to extract them in the first three races.

“It’s really unexpected. It’s true that today we were with the favourite ones with the better pace, but the plan was the perfect way.

“When I saw I was second on the first lap, I said, ‘Ok, you have many possibilities, we need to go for it’.

“Then I decided to overtake Marc, and from that moment not make mistakes and try to make my pace, exactly the same pace I had in the Practice on Friday evening.

“It was the perfect plan. I was able to push in the moments when it was necessary and to have something in the pocket when it was necessary.”

Ducat introduced tweaks to the GP26 for the race weekend aimed at improving braking, though Marquez noted on Friday that the same problems persisted.

Looking ahead to the work he’ll have in the test on Monday, Marquez told TNT Sport: “We have many things to try, we have many things to see, especially directions to follow.

“So, it’s a track that I like, it’s a track that always I’m fast so it will be important to try the things in a really good way, hope to have good weather, constant weather, close to today's temperature.

“It will be really important, but it’s true that with the base that we had today, I think we can fight in the next race.

“But it’s true that now we need to analyse everything we did differently this weekend.”