Is this Moto2’s next Marc Marquez?

David Alonso’s incredible Moto3 title season in 2024 means there are large expectations placed on the Colombian for 2025 and his debut Moto2 season, but who will he be compared against in that regard?

There have been some excellent first-year campaigns in the intermediate class since it went four-stroke in 2010, and here are our top-five.

5 - Pedro Acosta

Pedro Acosta is one of very few riders who have gone into a rookie Moto2 campaign with a similar level of anticipation as Alonso, perhaps even more considering Acosta’s own standout ability in braking that he displayed in Moto3 and that he won the title in his rookie year.

It was not a stellar beginning to his first Moto2 season, going 12-9-7 in his first three rides, with four non-scoring races coming after that.

But the last of those non-scores came in France, where he started on pole, and at the next race in Italy he finally got over the line and did so in the lead, winning his first intermediate class Grand Prix in his eighth attempt.

Unfortunately, after another podium in Germany, Acosta crashed while training ahead of the Assen race and broke his left femur, forcing him out of the Dutch TT, as well as the British Grand Prix after the summer break.

In his third race back, Acosta won again, this time with the fastest lap, in Aragon, and was on the podium twice more: second in Australia, and first in Valencia to end his rookie season.

With hindsight, it’s possible to imagine a scenario where Acosta doesn’t get hurt before Assen and keeps that podium and victory momentum building into and after the summer break, mounting a serious title challenge.

In reality, his Red Bull KTM Ajo teammate Augusto Fernandez won the title and Acosta finished fifth, paying the price not only for his mid-season injury but also the four DNFs and two additional non-scoring rides he picked up along the way.

4 - Alex Rins

Alex Rins’ rookie Moto2 campaign didn’t perhaps have the flash of some others on this list, but he finished as high as anyone else in the final standings.

The clear low point of his 2015 season was the disqualification in Misano where he disobeyed blue flags after crashing out with Dominique Aegerter.

But that low point came in the middle of a run of podiums that saw him on the podium in five out of six successive races between Germany and Aragon, the Spaniard taking a maiden intermediate class win at Indianapolis in the middle of that sequence.

There was one more win later in the year in Australia, and Rins was on the podium in 10 of the 18 races that year (including back-to-back rostrums in his second and third races in Texas and Argentina) while registering only one DNF (Malaysia) and three other non-scores: the Misano disqualification, an 18th in Spain, and 17th at Le Mans after crashing out while trying to pass Franco Morbidelli for fifth.

Overall it was an exceptionally consistent season from Rins in his perhaps belated ascent to Moto2, the proof of which is in his bettering of 2014 Moto2 Champion Tito Rabat by three points in the final standings.

3 - Maverick Vinales

Maverick Vinales spent only one year in Moto2, like one other rider in this list, and although he finished one place lower in 2014 than Rins did in 2015, he scored 40 points more on 274.

Finishing only behind the Marc VDS duo of Mika Kallio and eventual 2014 champion Tito Rabat, Vinales registered only two DNFs (one of those being at the final race in Valencia when he took out Kallio at the final corner on the opening lap, the other coming at round three in Argentina) in 2014, and of the races he finished he was outside the top five only once (ninth in Italy, and sixth in the Czech Republic).

There was victory in race two for Vinales, earlier than anyone else on this list, and between round seven in Barcelona and the penultimate round in Malaysia he was off the podium only three times (Germany, the Czech Republic, and San Marino).

It was really the final part of the season where Vinales caught fire, winning three races in four between Aragon and Malaysia, and finishing second in the other (Japan), and while he ended up 72 points behind the champion, Rabat, by the end of the season, that seemed more to do with the exceptional form Rabat (who finished every race and was classified lower than fourth only once, in Assen) than anything especially wrong that Vinales did.

2 - Raul Fernandez

While Vinales’ season was undoubtedly impressive the top two on this list are the only ones who have mounted legitimate title challenges.

When Raul Fernandez stepped up in 2021, he’d had mostly disappointing Moto3 career, having won the 2018 Junior World Championship, but ultimately showed enough at the end of 2020 – most notably with victories in Valencia and Portimao, but also with podiums in four of the last five races – to earn himself a promotion to Moto2.

Teammates to the experienced Remy Gardner, the clear intention was for Fernandez to learn from Gardner in year one while the Australian challenged for the title.

However, it ended up being a bar-to-bar fight between the pair throughout the year, with Gardner remaining slightly more consistent through the year while Fernandez had, at times, a touch more outright speed.

Fernandez ultimately came up four points short of Gardner, despite winning eight races to the Australian’s five, largely thanks to his three DNFs, including a crash from second place in Germany and later a crash from the lead in Emilia-Romagna.

2021 was a strange year with a restricted, mostly-European calendar and some remaining double-header races in the post-Covid year, but Fernandez nonetheless broke the 300-point barrier and came up only four points short of the title – unquestionably one of the greatest seasons in Moto2 history by any non-champion, let alone a rookie.

1 - Marc Marquez

But not the best ever, because that was Marc Marquez’s 2011 season.

Fernandez was on the podium in his second race and won in his third, Marquez’s first podium was his also his first win coming, in his fourth race in France. Fernandez won eight races in 2021, Marquez only seven. Fernandez scored 307 points, Marquez only 251.

So why was Marquez’s season better?

In 2021, Fernandez was as good as Gardner, and the pair of them were better than anyone else.

In 2011, Marquez was much faster than everyone else almost from the beginning, but in a style synonymous with the Spaniard it took him some races to figure walk back just far enough from the very edge and to a place where he was able to be fast enough to win but far enough within the limit that he didn’t crash.

Marquez won for the first time in France, and wasn’t off the podium again – with the exception of his DNF at the British Grand Prix – until he crashed in qualifying at Malaysia and damaged his eye muscles.

Marquez might’ve ended 19 points further adrift of the championship in 2011 than Fernandez had done in 2021, but performances like the one he put in in Australia – where he had to start 38th and last after crashing into Ratthapark Wilairot on the cooldown lap in qualifying, but recovered in the race to finish third – was a perfect example of the substantiality of his advantage.

It was also the perfect example of why he didn’t win the championship, because as unbelievably fast and hungry as he was, he was also clearly flawed, and hadn’t yet understood how to properly utilise his strengths, something perhaps understandable for an 18-year-old.