‘I could have fought Marc Marquez till the end on a Ducati’

Jorge Martin believes it’s possible he could have taken the fight to Marc Marquez if he had been racing a Ducati in the 2025 MotoGP season.

Martin went from feeling on top of the world when he was crowned MotoGP champion in November 2024 to facing a true nightmare defending the crown this year, with four injuries and the same number of surgeries leaving him on the sidelines for major chunks of the season.

The Spaniard, who left Pramac Ducati to join Aprilia in 2025, was only able to start eight race weekends, take part in seven grands prix and cross the finish line in four of them in a bruising season.

Martin first received a setback when he fractured his foot and hand at the start of pre-season testing in Sepang in February. When he was ready to start his campaign properly at the season opener in Thailand, he was injured again while testing his strength on a supermoto bike. 

After missing the first three races of the season, he finally returned to action in Qatar, but picked up his third injury of 2025 after being run over by another rider. 

It was surely his worst injury and the one that affected him the most this season. As a result, he was out for seven grands prix, returning at the end of July at the Czech Republic GP, once the first half of the season was already over.

After five successive appearances, he crashed at the start of the sprint race in Japan and got injured again, missing the entire Asian-Oceania tour as a result. 

The Spaniard reappeared at the final round of the season in Valencia, where he retired feeling the effects of inactivity and, above all, to save strength for the post-race test.

“I am one of the five reference riders in MotoGP”

In Misano, just before the Japanese GP, Motorsport.com was able to speak to Martin in a wide-ranging interview. One topic discussed was how it feels for his ego to go from being at the top of the world to fading out of the media spotlight and barely being talked about.

“It hasn’t affected me at all, I feel like I’m always in the spotlight. I always say it, for one reason or another, I’m always everywhere, whether it’s the interview on El Hormiguero, or La Resistencia, or [about] Aprilia, or I get injured, or I come back…,” he said.

“I feel that I’m one of the reference riders, together with Marc [Marquez], Fabio [Quartararo], Pecco [Bagnaia] and Pedro [Acosta]. The five of us are the riders who are always there. 

“I hope to keep being there, but not out of ego— I don’t care whether people talk about me or not — but I feel that it’s that way. We [the five of us] are kind of the spearhead.”

When Ducati chose Marquez for the factory team in June 2024, it offered Martin the chance to stay at Pramac with identical machinery to the #93. But he turned it down and went to Aprilia instead. 

It’s purely hypothetical to wonder what might have happened if he had stayed on a Desmosedici GP, but it’s possible the season could have played out differently.

Asked if he could have fought the Marquez brothers for the title if he were racing a factory-spec Ducati at Pramac in 2025, he said: “We’ll never know. But looking at Alex Marquez’s season and looking at the race times this year compared to those of 2024, I think I could have fought.

“Obviously, I would have given 100%, and I think that 100% would have been enough to fight — I’m not saying to beat Marc, because that’s impossible to know now, maybe we’ll know later. Because what Marc has done this year is something outrageous. 

“But I consider myself strong and I think that, keeping the same bike for another year and with more experience, I could definitely have fought. But that’s something we’ll never know.”

“From a media point of view, what Marc says carries a lot of weight”

Podium: Worldchampion Marc Marquez, Ducati Team

Photo by: MotoGP

Marquez has been nearly unbeatable on track this year, and he also has the biggest following on social media, where Martin’s previous answer will surely spark reactions from the Catalan’s legion of fans. 

“On social media, I don’t know, because I don’t really look at the other riders’ accounts,” he said. “In fact, I have many of them muted because I don’t feel like seeing their posts.

“But Marc is a tougher rival on track — he’s a competitive beast and he always tries to beat you, even if it means risking crashing and losing the championship. He will always try to win the race.

“From a media point of view, what Marc says always carries a lot of weight and a lot of power. He has a lot of people behind him who support him. But more than his strength on social media, it’s how what he says can affect you in a press conference. To fight against the best Marc, you have to be very well prepared.

“But I’ll also tell you that the best Marc is going to make me a better rider, because the better he is, the better I’m going to have to be, because I’ll be following in his footsteps and learning from him. So hopefully we can fight in the future.”

Martin is convinced that his bad luck this year was not due to the #1 on the front of his bike and is confident that he will be able to win a title again.

“I will wear [#1] again. Sooner or later, I will wear it again,” he said.

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— The Motorsport.com Team