Alex Marquez’s current MotoGP campaign has been a far cry from his breakthrough season last year. The Gresini star was expected to build on his 2025 success after being awarded a factory-spec bike by Ducati, but this year hasn’t quite panned out as he or his team would have hoped.
After establishing himself as one of the most consistent riders on the grid - he scored at least one top-two finish in 17 out of 22 weekends last year - the Spaniard has found himself experiencing sharp swings from one race to the other.
With just five rounds remaining, he languishes a distant eighth in the championship on 172 points, fewer than half as many points as his elder brother Marc Marquez. The gap to VR46’s Fabio di Giannantonio, who races the same GP26 as him and has endured his own struggles after the summer break, stands at a substantial 73 points.
But Gresini remains certain that the 30-year-old hasn’t lost any of the speed he is known for. Instead, the team feels he is still being held back by a compromised right shoulder after breaking his collarbone in an unfortunate crash with Pedro Acosta at the Catalan Grand Prix in May.
“We know that after winning years, the later years could be tough - at least to repeat the same results,” Gresini team manager Michele Masini told Motorsport.com.
“This year, at a certain point, when we found a very good base and a very good speed like last year, we had a huge crash in Barcelona - a huge injury that stopped him for a couple of races.
“There are some years where you also need to be lucky to get results and to be constant. Sometimes, we forget that injury is a part of the game.
“So far, we were a bit unlucky but I'm really impressed and happy about his speed because he never lost the speed.
“After the injury, he came back and he showed that the speed was there. It's true that he's not still at his 100% with the right shoulder after the injury. To ride a MotoGP bike, you have to be at 100%. For example, if at the moment you are 95%, you are missing something.
“But we will try to maximise every weekend to try to bring home good results.”
Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / Getty Images
Tough beginnings
Alex Marquez was already on the back foot at the start of the season, with the GP26 proving ill-suited to his riding style. This left him feeling unable to exploit the final 20% of the bike’s performance, with Aprilia's superiority over Ducati adding to his woes. After the opening three flyaways, he had accumulated a measly 28 points.
But as the championship returned to Europe, Gresini and Alex Marquez finally hit the right chord, and they ended Aprilia’s winning streak with a dominant performance at Jerez. That renewed form seemingly carried into the following rounds, with Marquez winning the Barcelona sprint and challenging Pedro Acosta for victory in the grand prix.
Then, Acosta’s KTM suddenly slowed down with an electrical problem on the back straight, leaving Marquez with little time to take evasive action. While he managed to avoid the wall after being sent off the track at high speed, he slammed the ground with heavy force and broke his collarbone.
Marquez was forced to miss the following two races at Mugello and Balaton Park, while lingering problems also forced him to abandon his comeback at Brno. It wasn’t until the Dutch GP - two rounds before the summer break - that he was able to start a Sunday race again.
Since then, the younger Marquez has experienced both highs and lows in MotoGP, but he has yet to reproduce the level of consistency that made him a title contender in 2025.
With the calendar becoming even more demanding in the second half of the season, the final 10 races scheduled across just 14 weekends, the physical toll has only amplified.
“I'm still struggling a little bit on the shoulder,” Marquez admitted in Mandalika. “When I came back from the injury, it was not bad, because it was one race, then one week off, one race, one week off, and it was quite easy.
“But from Misano…. already in Austria, I struggled a lot. Already in Japan with the [long] flight and everything, I struggled more, and here [in Indonesia], much more.
“So it's the reason why we save a little bit of physical [energy] and try not to irritate the shoulder so much.”
Repeated mistakes
Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / Getty Images
Since his comeback, Alex Marquez has also made several uncharacteristic errors. At the German GP, he blamed his own “overconfidence” after crashing out of a safe second place behind Marc Marquez. Likewise, when the season resumed after the summer break, he was the fastest Ducati rider at Silverstone but threw away his chances of a podium finish with what he described as an “unacceptable” mistake.
More recently, the Motegi weekend turned into a complete disaster as he made the gear-change mistake on two occasionbs, upshifting when he should have been downshifting into the corner.
Masini stressed that bouncing back from setbacks is part of the challenge a MotoGP rider faces in their career.
“The crucial thing is that a rider and the team together need to be able to reset sometimes,” he said.
“Sometimes you have to face different conditions, which can affect your weekend. Sometimes after a crash, the rider has to switch his mind to reset and understand what happened.
“But it's also normal that a worst weekend could happen during a season.”
No catching Marc Marquez
Alex Marquez’s recent form echoes a wider trend within the Ducati contingent, with the gulf between Marc Marquez and the rest of its riders having significantly widened in the second half of the season. Since the season resumed at Silverstone, Marc Marquez has amassed a whopping 163 points thanks to his three double victories and another sprint success. Alex Marquez has been the second-highest Ducati scorer in that period, but his 85 points amount to little more than half his brother’s tally.
Gresini, however, is convinced that Alex Marquez’s level would have been similar to 2025, even in comparison to Marc, had he been fully fit.
“I have to say that before the Barcelona weekend he was there - at some points, he was even faster than Marc,” Masini said. “If I have to think about before the injury, I have to say that he was at the same level of last year in terms of competing with Marc.
“In the second part [of the season], we still have to face the recovery from this injury, but it's true that we continue to have Marc as the reference at Ducati because some targets changed for us during this season.
“But we would like to continue to push because we have to reach some targets, the riders’ standings and teams’ standings in the championship.”
Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / Getty Images
Despite the inconsistency and the avoidable errors, Alex Marquez has put together some strong performances while dealing with his shoulder injury. In the Aragon sprint, he finished a strong second place, while he also put on a late challenge against Marc Marquez for victory at the San Marino GP, even though Marc had him covered.
Considering the difficulties Di Giannantonio and Francesco Bagnaia have also faced on the GP26, Alex Marquez continues to deliver respectable results, even though the gap to the front remains too large for a rider of his calibre.
As Alex Marquez prepares to bring the curtain down on a four-year chapter with Gresini, the team is keen to end things on a high. The Spaniard rebuilt himself at the Italian squad after a tough spell at Honda, and is now ripe for a factory seat.
Masini remains convinced that Alex's underlying speed has not disappeared and believes his determination to recover can still yield results in the closing rounds.
“I appreciate his strength and his determination to come back at the top level - at the highest level possible,” Masini said of his comeback.
“He still did all the things necessary to recover after every session, after every race. It's true that these back-to-back races don’t help us so much in terms of recovery, but he's still trying the way to be fast, and it's working.
“We will try to maximise every weekend to try to bring home good results. I'm really proud of him. We have the last [few] races [of the season] to put all together with this team and achieve a lot of results.”
Read Also:
Marc Marquez will have to perform his "juggling act" in coming MotoGP races, says Alex
Gresini: New MotoGP rules won't increase gap between factory and satellite teams