We recently asked for your questions about Marc Marquez, with an autographed Insta360 Ace Pro 2 MM93 Edition camera on offer for the best question as judged by The Race MotoGP Podcast panel.
We’ll reveal the winner of the competition later this week, but we’re also going to try to answer as many questions as we can across our website, MotoGP Podcast, MotoGP YouTube channel and The Race Members' Club on Patreon in a variety of content over the coming weeks.
To start off, we tasked Simon and Val with 10 brilliant hypothetical Marquez scenarios you’d asked about.
Here are their takes on how MotoGP history might’ve turned out differently.
Do you think Ducati could somehow have got Marc after 2019 for the 2020 season? How much more would they have needed to offer?
No, because back then the Honda RC213V was still working very well for him and Ducati had no way at all to compete with Honda’s frankly absurd financial terms.
Remember, Marc extended with Honda on a four-year deal that was probably MotoGP’s first ever €100million plus contract. Ducati, with its traditionally low salaries, could only dream of being able to offer that. Even when it poached a disgruntled Jorge Lorenzo away from Yamaha, it was on a two-year deal worth half of that.
But the bigger issue, especially for someone like Marc so focused on winning races and championships, is that the Honda bike hadn’t turned bad in 2019. Just before the arrival of wings and ride height devices in full force, he had his most dominant season ever that year, and it would only really be after his absence in 2020 that we got an idea of how far the mighty Honda had fallen by getting left behind. - Simon Patterson
Given what Marc Marquez has accomplished on the Ducati the past two seasons, how do you think he would have done if he had ridden the Ducati from 2017 through 2020? - Johan from Norway
The boring answer is I suspect he wins all four championships. But I think the more interesting question of whether he would be challenged really depends a lot on how much credit we attribute to Jorge Lorenzo for hoping Ducati turn its moody rocketship into a much more malleable, versatile offering. Was Gigi Dall’Igna unlocking that level of the Desmosedici during Lorenzo’s time there correlation or causation?I’m not too sure - but if we assume a similar bike performance trend 2019 and 2020 are total walkovers for Marquez, maybe 2018, too.
But if the bike had stayed at around 2017 level relative to others, a one-in-four defeat is maybe plausible (though I’d struggle to call it likely). - Val Khorounzhiy
If he was transplanted in the era of the big four of Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo, Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa, how many championships fewer would the big four have.. .because Marc would surely win at least a couple, right?
An impossible question to answer, because we never got to see the biggest what if in MotoGP history: Marquez versus Stoner.
It’s hard to predict how that particular battle would have played out, although you would have to think that Stoner’s first title in 2007 with Ducati might at least be a little at risk if a fully up to speed Marquez had been on the grid back then.
Lorenzo and Rossi proved in 2015 that Marquez could be beaten, especially if his bike wasn’t compliant - but at the same time, the Honda of the early part of that era, when it was Nicky Hayden and Pedrosa riding it, was a better bike than what came afterwards for Marc, and it’s probably Nicky’s 2006 title that would have been the easiest pickings for him.
Pedrosa’s number of MotoGP titles, of course, would be unaffected! - SP
Do you think if Marquez had gone to Aprilia for 2025 instead of Jorge Martin, that the bike and team would be performing better than it currently is with Marco Bezzecchi? - James
Yeah, he’s a better rider than Marco Bezzecchi, so that checks out.
The championship would probably be very optimistic - Marc couldn’t mount a sustained title challenge on the Ducati GP23 last year. I think the current Aprilia is closer to the GP24 than the previous Ducati is but maybe not closer enough - especially as in this scenario Martin would become a factory Ducati rider, so Ducati would have good insurance against Pecco Bagnaia’s current struggles. - VK
What do the last dozen years of MotoGP look like without Marc Marquez? Does Pedrosa get a championship? Does Andrea Dovizioso win titles? Does Alex Marquez win this year? - Tim Ross
In the scenario where Marc chooses motocross or something but Stoner still retires at the end of 2012, figuring out a Dani Pedrosa team-mate at Honda is a whole endeavour. And yeah, Pedrosa maybe gets one title in 2013 or 2014.
The Dovi part is complicated, because I think the absence of a Marc Marquez-level ‘gatekeeper’ that stands between other factories and titles really potentially changes Ducati’s timeline. Dovizioso was runner-up three times, yes, but he was afforded the time to set himself up at that team and become the best MotoGP version of himself - maybe that wouldn’t be the case if Ducati felt closer to a title earlier.
The Alex Marquez side of it is obviously even harder. Even assuming a similar trajectory in Moto3 and Moto2, maybe he gets on a satellite Yamaha and ends up having a totally different career. - VK
Had Marquez not broken his arm in 2020, even though the Honda was in decline, who do you think would have won the championships from 2020-2023? - The Subbros
Let’s assume the RC213V’s decline won’t have been impacted by the lack of Marc in the development process - which I think he would say is an unfair assumption, but it at least makes things a bit more interesting.
2020 is an obvious yes. And I feel OK about the 2021 title, too, and OK about the 2022 one, with 2023 probably a no-go.
I’m trying to look at it numerically. A hobbled Marquez was scoring 10.1 points per round in ‘21 - champion Fabio Quartararo did 15.4. The year after, Marquez was on 9.4 points per round - Bagnaia won the championship scoring 13.25. And when the sprints came in in ‘23, Marquez was only on 6.4 per round, while Bagnaia won the title with a 23.35.
Those gaps in ‘21 and ‘22 I think were close-able purely by fitness. Not the ‘23 gap, not with the chasm between Honda and Ducati. - VK
Do you think if Marc Marquez had signed for KTM in 2025, rather than factory Ducati, he still would be leading the championship? Given his riding style, and KTM’s current unpredictable performance, he could’ve been the guiding light KTM seems to be missing at the moment? Considering the fact that if Marc signed for a different manufacturer that Jorge Martin would’ve presumably got the factory Ducati seat, and by extension of that likely would not have injured himself in pre-season testing.
I think we’d be having a much better championship fight than we’re having right now, that’s for sure!
The big question mark is what Martin would be doing on a factory red GP25, because as we’ve seen the bike just isn’t working for Bagnaia - and you’ve got to think that it would be Martin versus Alex Marquez for top Ducati without Marc on the bike, even though there’s every chance that Martin would have the same problems as Bagnaia given their riding style isn’t miles apart.
Marc on the current KTM is an interesting proposition. It’s hard to get much of a steer for the bike’s level given that Pedro Acosta seems to be phoning it in a little, but Maverick Vinales is showing us that it’s certainly able to perform on occasion - and with the RC16 seemingly a slightly more refined version of the Honda Marc rode so well, I think he wouldn’t have taken anywhere near as long to get to the front on it. - SP
Toprak Razgatlioglu’s move to MotoGP raises the question of how transferable elite skills really are. In your opinion, if Marc Marquez swapped MotoGP for World Superbikes in 2026 on BMW machinery, would his talent guarantee dominance, or would the different technical demands and racing style present a real challenge?
Based on what we’ve seen Toprak do on it, I would have to say that if there is one bike in World Superbikes that Marc could probably win on instantly, it’s the BMW.
Hard braking, big lean angles, squaring off corners the way Toprak does? Made in heaven for Marc too - at least Honda-era Marc (and I think there’s still plenty of that skillset remaining that the transition would happen basically instantaneously).
The skills that both these guys have are obviously very transferable, but there are two things that work in Marc’s favour. First, the BMW suits him a whole lot more than the Yamaha M1 is going to suit Toprak’s style, and secondly because as we’ve seen in the past, it’s always easier to move from ultra-stiff prototype chassis to much softer production than the other way around. - SP
Would Marquez's MotoGP rise since 2013 have looked the same if he'd signed with any team, or was it truly tied to the way Honda was willing to so thoroughly build their bikes around him for the first decade he was in GP? - Nicholas Lariviere
I don’t think it looks exactly the same - I don’t, for example, think he would have been winning a rookie championship on a Ducati in 2013. Yes, he might have been able to do so on a Yamaha, but the reality is that he found a Honda very well paired with his riding style and the combination is why he was still able to adapt so quickly.
His arrival then kept the bike going in that direction, and eventually turned it into what he ended up on: a thing that was basically unrideable first by anyone else and then finally by him too.
Maybe Yamaha wouldn’t have done that, maybe Ducati would have taken longer to get there - but either way, the meteoric rise to dominance would have taken a whole lot longer. - SP
If Stoner had not retired, would Marc Marquez have as many championships?
Maybe he’d have more! In the sense of, maybe he avoids the 2020 injury through butterfly effect or however you want to call it.
I do suspect a healthy Stoner takes care of a rookie Marquez in 2013, but it would get really fun from there on, and I’m not totally convinced it’s a team-mate pairing that holds for more than a handful of years. Nor am I convinced that, if it’s time to choose between Stoner and Marquez, the former would have much of a case - even if it’s a tie, the age is a tiebreaker.
Yet if Stoner then washes up at Ducati or something, I do think he inflicts at least one title fight defeat on Marquez. What a season that would be! - VK
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