Marc Marquez leads the MotoGP championship for the first time in 2026. Victory in the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano, round 14 of 22, completed a second successive double for the Ducati Lenovo rider and finally overturned a deficit that stood at 102 points when he returned from injury in May, transforming a title fight that looked settled two months ago.
Marquez and Aprilia’s Jorge Martin are locked together on 274 points. The tie-break is emphatic: five grand prix wins this season for Marquez against one for Martin, which places the reigning champion on top of the table on countback.
How Marc Marquez leads the MotoGP championship after Misano
Sunday’s race turned within a minute of the lights going out. Marco Bezzecchi, who had taken a record-breaking pole and resisted Marquez into Turn 1 for the first time in four races, lowsided through the quick right-handers at the end of the opening lap while leading. It was a third significant title-race error in a matter of weeks for the Italian, and it left the reigning champion in front.
Martin briefly made a race of it, passing Marquez on lap seven of 27 and edging clear. The #93 responded, retook the lead and controlled the closing stages, eventually heading home his brother Alex Marquez by 0.657 seconds. Pedro Acosta completed the podium for Red Bull KTM, with Fermin Aldeguer fourth.
Martin faded to fifth, more than 14 seconds adrift. Bezzecchi’s crash was followed by falls for Diogo Moreira and Francesco Bagnaia, while Jack Miller, Joan Mir, Alex Rins and Johann Zarco all retired.
“It feels unreal”
Marquez has now won in Hungary, Czechia, Germany, Aragon and San Marino since rejoining the grid at Mugello, a run of five victories in seven grands prix built on top of sprint success that has turned a written-off season into a title lead.
“Unreal. It feels unreal,” he said in parc ferme. “But never give up. I will push until the end. This is not done, but this is not over.
“So, we are there in the championship, fighting against very good riders, especially Martin and Bez. But, as we saw, everything is on the limit, and a small mistake can cost a lot of points.
“And today, it’s true that in the race, after the Bezzecchi mistake, I was a bit too confident and then Martin attacked me. But then I regained again the confidence, I kept the pace and happy because that 37 points here at Misano means a lot.”
He was equally direct about the part his rivals have played. Speaking to Motorsport.com, Marquez said: “It’s true that the opponents give me the present. And when I tasted that present, it was sweet. So I’m trying to take the maximum profit from my riding style, from my bike and from my team.”
That framing is not false modesty. Marquez stood eighth in the standings heading into the Hungarian Grand Prix at Balaton Park, the eighth round, having ridden at Mugello on a foot repaired by surgery and a right shoulder that required a further procedure to correct a nerve problem dating back to Indonesia last October. Bezzecchi, by contrast, had won four of the opening seven grands prix.
Martin’s arm pump problem
The most consequential development at Misano may not be the points at all. Martin lost the championship lead because he physically could not hold his pace, and he now faces a decision that could shape the run-in.
“I had a big issue with arm pump,” the 2024 world champion said. “I thought Marc was going to pull away, but then I was catching him again, and I went into the lead. After that, I was even pulling away.
“But then I started to have issues with braking, then opening the throttle, and every lap was worse and worse. At the end, I couldn’t do anything; I was completely out of control of the bike.”
Surgery is the obvious remedy, but the calendar is unforgiving. “Now I don’t have time to do anything,” Martin said. “I have to recover well, try to be focused in Austria, but for sure we need to understand what to do after Austria, if I need to undergo surgery or not, because now there are a lot of races together.”
A first Marquez one-two, and a KTM podium
The podium told its own story. Alex Marquez, starting only ninth after a pair of qualifying crashes, carried Gresini’s Marco Simoncelli tribute livery to second — his first rostrum since a heavy Catalunya crash in May and the first Marquez one-two of the season, in his final Italian grand prix with the team.
“A huge honour to wear these colours, but especially to be on the podium,” Alex said. “It’s an unexpected podium for us, especially a P2. We were a little bit lucky for that crash but we were able to ride in a really good way and be strong until the end.” He suspected his brother was never fully extended: at one point he closed to within half a second, but felt Marc “was playing a little bit”.
Behind them, Acosta salvaged a podium from a weekend KTM had spent scrambling to fix. Sixth in Saturday’s sprint, the Spaniard was on for a run at the Marquez brothers before a front-end scare on lap 23 persuaded him it was “time to chill a bit”.
“Even if I finished third, it was much better race overall than Aragon,” he said. “We had a really tough weekend. It’s not so normal that I struggle as much as I did in the braking points. But we turned the weekend around by making a good job last night. We have to be happy. We battled with Ducatis, with Aprilias.”
The result lifts Acosta to fifth in the championship on 209 points. It also underlines how far Francesco Bagnaia has fallen: the double world champion crashed out at Misano and lies ninth on 143, behind Alex Marquez, having described his sprint performance a day earlier as humiliating.
Ducati refuse the favourites tag
Eight rounds remain, and Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi is not treating the table as settled.
“I think that here at Misano Marc showed who he is,” Tardozzi told the official MotoGP website. “But, on the other hand, we know that there are still eight races to go, with a lot of points to play for. And we perfectly know our opponents, the riders, the bike.
“So, we must be concentrated race by race and try to collect as many points as possible in each race track, because we know there are race tracks where Aprilia will be faster than us.”
Asked directly whether Ducati were now favourites, he was blunt: “No, I think there are no favourites in this moment. I guess that the championship will be played out until the end.”
There is substance behind the caution. The RS-GP26 has been the outstanding machine of 2026, and Aprilia still has two riders in the top three. Bezzecchi, who insisted pressure was not behind his Misano crash, sits third on 241 points, 33 back and far from finished.
The standings after Misano
Marc Marquez 274; Jorge Martin 274; Marco Bezzecchi 241; Fabio di Giannantonio 223; Pedro Acosta 209; Ai Ogura 203; Raul Fernandez 199; Alex Marquez 153; Francesco Bagnaia 143; Fermin Aldeguer 105.
The championship resumes at the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian Grand Prix next weekend, on a circuit whose heavy braking zones will test Martin’s forearm as thoroughly as anywhere on the calendar. Marquez arrives there leading a title race he had declared beyond him four months ago.
