Legend’s ‘aura’ returns, Bagnaia avoiding panic, Aussie ready for bumpy ride: MotoGP Insider’s Guide
Few people know what it’s like to go head-to-head with Marc Marquez in a title fight and prevail.
It’s a win that adds weight to the words of Stefan Bradl, the former Honda test rider and GP racer who beat Marquez in a Moto2 championship battle in 2011.
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Bradl, now retired from full-time racing but active behind the scenes with Honda’s development while commentating for Austria’s ServusTV, was in Thailand to open the season four weeks ago, and saw something he’d not seen for a while.
Marquez was back. Really back. Bradl sensed it as quickly as he saw it.
“In Buriram, I felt that special aura for the first time in a while … an invincible aura that Marc had for years in Honda,” Bradl told GPone.com.
“I expected Marc to be at [Ducati factory teammate Francesco Bagnaia’s] level right from the start, the fact he outclassed him so clearly was a bit of a surprise. With the media and fans, [Marquez] has that certain something again. ‘Pecco’ [Bagnaia] is already clearly number two.”
It’s a race for number two that Bagnaia hasn’t yet won this season; Marc Marquez’s younger sibling Alex has finished second on the grid, in the sprint and Grands Prix in Thailand and Argentina as big brother has cleaned up, taking a maximum 74 points from the first two rounds.
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If that sounds dominant, the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Texas, site of this weekend’s third round of 2025, might be the happiest of Marc Marquez’s many happy places.
A score of 7-3 sounds like it should be from a tie-break at Arthur Ashe Stadium for the US Open rather than 2800km away in Austin, but it’s the 32-year-old’s win-loss record from 10 premier-class starts at COTA, where he took the first of his 64 MotoGP wins in 2013.
Marquez was unbeaten in his first six starts at COTA before crashing out in 2019 – from the lead – as the only blot on a season where he finished every other race in first or second place.
In 2021, between arm surgeries, he won again. Last year, he fell from the lead on just his third race weekend on a Ducati after crossing from Honda, a brake problem sending him tumbling to the tarmac as another victory beckoned.
For all of his success at COTA, there’s two signature Marquez moments in Texas that didn’t result in wins, but are among his most memorable.
In 2015, Marquez’s bike packed up towards the end of qualifying, leaving him to sprint down the pit lane to get onto his spare Honda, ride an out-lap at full speed just to make it around in time to begin a timed lap, and then – almost crashing multiple times – ripped the rest to shreds by setting pole by 0.339secs.
In 2022, Marquez – ninth on the grid in his first race back from yet another injury – crawled off the line as his bike’s software glitched as the lights went out, eventually making it to the first corner in 24th place before his Honda belatedly kicked into gear. Across the next 20 laps, Marquez stormed past 18 rivals to make it all the way back to sixth, arguably his best ride without a podium in his career.
That COTA CV and his 2025 form makes picking anyone else to win this weekend an exercise in extreme optimism, but results against the form guide aren’t uncommon at a long, bumpy and physical circuit that’s used by Formula One, and one that’s unlike anywhere else on the calendar.
Case in point: Ducati’s current run of 19 consecutive Grand Prix wins began after COTA last year, a weekend where Maverick Vinales won the sprint and Grand Prix for Aprilia from pole, and third-race sensation Pedro Acosta led for six laps and finished second for KTM.
Here’s your Insider’s Guide to round three of the MotoGP season this weekend, with the 20-lap Grand Prix set for Monday at 6am (AEDT).
MARQUEZ DRIVEN BY THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
While Marc Marquez’s red-hot start to 2025 and his imposing COTA record makes him an unbackable favourite, the Spaniard said on Thursday that it’s one that got away – his inexplicable 2019 crash on lap nine of 20 when holding a comfortable four-second lead as he chased a seventh straight Texas success – that’s front of mind.
“Obviously we’ve started the season in the best way possible, and the most important thing is that every practice, every session, I feel the bike, I feel the limits, I feel comfortable,” he said in the pre-event press conference.
“But we need to keep focused and fully concentrate because for example in my best season in MotoGP in 2019, the only circuit where I made a mistake was here.
“The expectations are higher and higher for every race, the results don’t help to calm expectations. For that reason [I mentioned] 2019 … I try to think in a negative way to avoid that extra confidence that can create a situation that we don’t like.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: In this week’s episode of Pit Talk, hosts Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton look at Marc Marquez’s mastery of Thailand and Argentina to open the 2025 season, assess the state of play for all five manufacturers so far, and preview this weekend’s Grand Prix of the Americas at COTA.
Alex Marquez has been, somewhat surprisingly, older brother Marc’s biggest challenger this season, his sixth premier-class campaign beginning with strong back-to-back showings that have seen him lead more laps than any other rider (33) and never slipping outside of the top two.
The younger Marquez has historically struggled at COTA – he managed just one podium (second in Moto2 in 2018) in his junior career before graduating to MotoGP, where 12th in 2021 is his best return from four starts.
Putting that run to bed will be the surest sign that his 2025 season start has staying power, more than simply being a short feel-good sibling story.
“My history, it looks like Austin is not one of my favourite tracks, especially in MotoGP,” he admitted.
“But I was quite unlucky in the past … In 2023 I was quite fast but then I had [first-lap] contact with [Jorge] Martin in turn three.
“It’s true we arrive in a really good shape from the first two races … many races last year, we struggled. This year we’re able to be really, really fast and this is something really, really great – every time I feel more comfortable and better with the bike.
“But the expectation has to be like every race that we arrive, we start here from zero again like we did in Thailand and Argentina [then] we will see where we are.”
NO PANIC FOR BAGNAIA AFTER SLUGGISH START
While Marquez has hit the ground running with the factory Ducati team, new teammate Bagnaia – overlooked for a pre-event press conference for the first time since the Dutch TT of 2022 on Thursday – has had a muted start to 2025, a season after he won 11 of 20 Grands Prix and narrowly missed out on a third consecutive title.
The Italian has already spotted Marquez a 31-point lead in the standings after just two rounds, but has a penchant for slow season starts.
After winning in Qatar to open 2024, it took Bagnaia until round nine to get back ahead of Martin; at that aforementioned Assen round in 2022, Bagnaia was 66 points adrift of series leader Fabio Quartararo before winning the next four Grands Prix and eventually overhauling the Yamaha rider for the championship.
On Thursday, Bagnaia pinpointed the area where he’s struggled most, relative to Marquez.
“Analysing the performance, I’m missing the entrance of the corners, entrance speed for the corners,” he said.
“That was a particular good point from my riding style. We have to focus on it and try to improve. It’s clear that it was not the ideal start in terms of feeling, but I finished all the races in the top four. We just have to be calm and continue working like I’m doing.”
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Bagnaia was 5.536secs adrift of Marquez in Argentina in fourth place, and spoke openly about Ducati’s GP25 bike and the lack of connection he felt to it after two rounds, leading to discussions that he’d prefer to revert to the GP24 to recapture the sensations he felt last season.
On Thursday, the 28-year-old clarified his comments.
“I’m not very good to explain things in English, maybe … what I wanted to explain was that I wanted to be back to my feeling on the GP24, not to switch to the GP24 because it’s not possible,” he said.
“I know the new bike has a better potential, Marc is showing it. I just need to focus on finding back my feeling.
“I know that I can be faster here compared to Argentina, which was always a difficult track for me in every category. I will try to be competitive from Friday morning and continue working on improving, because I know that the potential here can be higher.”
MILLER: COTA LAYOUT PLAYS TO YAMAHA’S STRENGTHS
Jack Miller is optimistic the corner characteristics of the 20-turn Circuit of the Americas track layout can suit Yamaha this weekend, after the optimism of his strong debut for the Pramac Racing squad in Thailand was tempered by a largely anonymous weekend for Yamaha in Argentina, where he finished 13th.
The Australian, twice a podium finisher in Texas (third in 2019 and 2022), said on Thursday that the nature of the 5.513km track – unique for its combination of switchback corners at the beginning of the lap and a tyre-punishing triple right-hander from turns 16-18 – should offer all four Yamaha riders a chance of stronger results than in Termas de Rio Hondo a fortnight ago.
“The strong point of the bike is that it turns very well, and it’s not too bad with the stop-start corners so I think we should be able to have a better weekend than we had in Argentina,” Miller said.
“The end of that [first] section, where you’ve got to turn without getting the bike to pitch, that’s what the Yamaha does super well. Also the triple right-hander at the end of the lap, you’ve got to get the bike in there under power and that’s what this bike does super well.
“It’s a track I thoroughly enjoy, it’s a rider’s track and you can cover up some issues with the bike around here, so I’m looking forward to a strong weekend.”
The notoriously bumpy surface at COTA, which struggles with drainage and is subjected to extremities of temperature year-round, has been partially resurfaced since F1 raced in Texas last October. New tarmac has been laid between turns 1-2, turns 19-20 (the final two corners) and at turns 11 and 12, the corners leading into and at the end of a 1.2km back straight, where the majority of overtakes are attempted.
“This track is historically bumpy so I’m looking forward to not having to ride as conservative over the bumps … another thing this bike does really well is bump absorption,” Miller said.
“It’s been pretty bumpy, but it’s been like that since we came here the first year. This track moved and warped a bit, it’s just the lay of the land around here, that soil that moves and doesn’t really settle. It adds to the character of the track.”
All four Australian riders in the three world championship categories will be in action for the first time this year in Texas, with Miller, Senna Agius (Moto2) and Joel Kelso (Moto3) being joined by Moto3 rider Jacob Roulstone, who makes his belated 2025 debut after a horrendous testing accident in January left him with a fractured and displaced C3 vertebrae in his neck.
The Wollongong 20-year-old had surgery to insert a plate and screws in his neck after the accident in Jerez and spent a month in a neck brace, and returns to the circuit where he had his equal-best result of his 2024 rookie Moto3 campaign (eighth) with the KTM Tech3 team.