Mark Marquez won the 2025 MotoGP World Championship and took his first opportunity with Ducati to appear at the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend at Motegi.
The 2023 Japanese Grand Prix represents the podium of the 32-year-old’s final main race with the factory Honda team. A few days later, he announced he would leave to join Gresini Ducati to rebuild his deadlocked career.
Two years from that moment, Mark Marquez has a chance to return to Japan’s Grand Prix in 2025 and become a perfect circle as the factory Ducati squad is facing his first match point in the title race.
Mark Marquez won his seventh premier class world title this weekend, bringing out Valentino Rossi and his level, attracting him in his ninth class in all classes, and flattening him with Italian legend once again.
After the San Marino Grand Prix, he led the championship with 182 points from Alex Marquez of Gresini after beating Aprilia’s Marco Betzecchi in the 11th victory of the season.
Mathematically, only one of the Marquez brothers is now able to win the 2025 world title.
Mark Marquez can’t win the championship in the sprint, so he has to finish the weekend with a 185-point gap to his younger brother.
The permutation is many, but this is the simplest one. In both races, Mark Marquez will need to line up Alex Marquez by just three points to get the rankings.
If the point gap after the sprint stays, Mark Marquez’s victory seals the deal regardless of where Alex Marquez ends.
How many world titles did Mark Marquez win in Japan?
Motegi has been a happy hunting ground for Marc Marquez for many years.
He won the 2014 Honda Hometown title and did so again in 2016. After facing Andrea Dovizioso in the final round of 2017, Marquez won the 2018 title in Japan.
The Japanese Grand Prix was also Ducati’s first world title scene with Casey Stoner in 2007.
Why Mark Marquez doesn’t want to continue the championship in Indonesia
If Alex Marquez proves he can maintain Mark Marquez’s point gap under the 185-point threshold for the factory Ducati rider to win the title in Japan, it will be caught up in Indonesia’s Grand Prix next weekend.
From Indonesia, there are 185 points left on the table. So the title victory there is almost certainly a form for Mark Marquez.
However, Mandalica has not been a good venue for the 32-year-old since joining the calendar in 2022.
He staged the first Indonesian Grand Prix there after repeated violent crashes in the warm-up and then repeatedly battling double vision issues.
In 2023 he crashed from both the Sprint and Grand Prix, but last year he suffered from mechanical issues in the main race, which finished third in the Sprint.