Marc Marquez: Seven-time MotoGP World Champion

Marc Marquez, MotoGP Champion

Last weekend Marc Marquez secured his seventh world title. Not is this an insanely impressive as a single achievement, it is made even more impressive if you consider the injuries he has endured the last 5 years. We will look at his journey through MotoGP in this article.

Marquez joined the grid in 2013. He did this driving for Repsol Honda. He was a rookie with a lot of spotlights on him already. This is because during official testing days he was third on the chard for two days. Ahead of Rossi, who was forth. When the season started, he also started with a podium finish. The race after he became the youngest race winner ever by winning at the Circuit of the Americas at just 20 years and 63 days. Beating a record which had been established thirty years earlier. In this season he went on to get 6 wins, 9 poles and 16 podium finishes. Which crowned him world champion in his rookie season, and the youngest world champion ever.

In 2014, Marquez also went on to win the championship. This time also breaking another record, most wins in a single season. He achieved 13 race wins in an 18 races season, a truly dominant season. 10 of these race wins were consecutive in the start of the season.

The 2015 season was a difficult one. He had an inconsistent season. Not finishing two races in a row, and in total retiring six of the eighteen races. More importantly, he had a clash with Rossi in the Malaysia Grand Prix. This crash caused Rossi to get three penalty points and make him start back of the grid at the next race. Rossi, who was at the moment in a championship fight with his teammate. Marquez stated after the race; “For me, it doesn't matter if you are Valentino or another rider, [in] this type of incident you are out of control. To take a leg off and push another rider out, it is difficult to think like this on the bike.”. To which Rossi responded with that he’d lost all respect for Marquez as a rider, he also theorised that Marquez was the one at blame and that it was a revenge act from an earlier race; “He decided the championship, and he made me lose the championship. I think that he will be very happy.”

From 2016 to 2019, he won the world championship back to back. All four seasons were dominant consistent from his end. With 2019 being the cherry on the cake with a near perfect season. He finished on the podium eighteen out of the nineteen races. Winning twelve of them. He secured the title this season with a total of 420 points. Placing him 151 points above the number two. This meant he had more than six race wins of margin between him and the second placed.

Then in 2020, the accident happened. He broke his arm in the first race of the season. After trying to race again after his first surgery in a free practise, he declared he had too much pain and withdrew from the championship that year.

In 2021, he missed the first two races of the season but then his long waited comeback started, slowly. He won three races this year. He wasn’t in completion for the championship, but he did so flashes of his old self. In this season alone he crashed twenty-two times, while he only competed in fourteen weekends.

In the second weekend of the 2022 season, he crashed four times. After the fourth time he was rushed to the hospital. There he was declared uninjured but also unfit to race. He was diagnosed with diplopia, also known as double vision. Later in the season he had a surgery on his arm. Even though he missed five out of eleven races before the summer break, he was still the top Honda driver when the summer break came. After the summer break, he came back but was crashed into by another driver, both of them retiring from the race. Still he would achieve 100 career podiums in the premier class this season. Despite not finishing eight out of twenty races, he would finish thirteenth this season with 113 points, more than double what his teammates managed to achieve.

In 2023, he struggled with an uncompetitive Honda bike. He withdrew from several races in the season and lost races he’d never lost before. One of these being the German GP, which he hadn’t lost since 2010. He barely managed a podium in Japan. Towards the end of the season it was announced that Honda and Marquez had ended their contract prematurely and that he would go to Gresini Racing the next season.

The next season, 2024, he started with Gresini Racing. Starting to come back at the top. Consistently fighting at the front of the grid and winning four races again. This season he finished third in the championship.

Then this year, Marquez won the championship again. He joined Ducati Lenovo this year. He drove an instantly dominant season that isn’t even over yet. Fighting against his brother Alex Marquez. This title equals him with Rossi and puts them both at seven world titles. Only Giacomo Agostini stands above the two men with eight titles, from which seven were back to back.

Written by Aiden