What Marc Marquez’s stunning US MotoGP record warns us about 2025 COTA race

Nobody in the sprint era has been able to make the start to a season like Marc Marquez has in 2025. From four races over two rounds run so far, the factory Ducati rider has a 100% record, and that even extends to pole positions. At present, his points per round pace is at a perfect 37. That’s a considerable jump on the previous two years, when Marco Bezzecchi’s PPR total was 25 after two rounds in 2023 and Jorge Martin’s was 30 after the first two events of 2024.

Two rounds isn’t a fair metric to gauge how the remainder of a season will pan out. After all, the last time a rider won the opening two races from pole was Fabio Quartararo in 2020 - and he would only win once more that season and drop from title favourite to eighth in the standings come the end of it.

Undoubtedly, there will be points in 2025 where Marquez is challenged. His younger brother Alex Marquez has made a strong start to the campaign for Gresini Racing on the GP24, finishing second from second at every race so far. He held his own while leading in Argentina and really forced Marc Marquez to push hard for that one.

Marc Marquez is convinced Alex will win multiple races in 2025. But beyond that, there hasn't been a serious threat to the eight-time world champion’s dominance yet.

And that is unlikely to be the case heading into this weekend’s Americas Grand Prix, either. Scene of Ducati’s only defeat in 2024 courtesy of Aprilia and Maverick Vinales, the Circuit of the Americas has been a stomping ground for Marc Marquez throughout his MotoGP career.

When the Texan venue joined the calendar in 2013, it bore witness to Marc Marquez’s first premier class victory. He won there every subsequent year through to 2018. While leading in 2019, he crashed and opened the door for Suzuki’s Alex Rins to take the first of his two MotoGP wins that year after a fun battle with Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi.

Marquez was back to winning ways at COTA in 2021, one of his three victories in his comeback year from a serious arm injury. Even with essentially one arm, Marquez was over four seconds clear of the field at the chequered flag in that event. In 2022, a bad start dropped him down the field but he recovered to sixth with pace that should have seen him also win that grand prix.

Absent through injury in 2023 when Honda’s Rins climbed onto the top step of the podium again, last year’s Americas GP represented a strong opportunity for his first win on the Ducati at Gresini. But an issue with his brakes meant he crashed just moments after taking the lead.

Why is Marc Marquez so good in America?

Marquez’s dominance in America stretches beyond the Circuit of the Americas. Dating back to his first victory in the US in the 2011 Moto2 Indianapolis GP, Marquez has won in the country (across COTA, Indianapolis and Laguna Seca) 13 times from 19 starts. That works out at a 68.42% success rate in America and is only exceeded by his hit rate at the German GP of 78.57% from 11 wins out of 14 starts at the Sachsenring.

The key to Marquez’s success on US tracks and the Sachsenring is similar, in that they are anticlockwise. Typically, this suits Marquez’s riding style more, with the factory Ducati rider arguably the fastest rider in left turns in the world championship.

“What he does on the bike, I’ve laughed about it with Marc, is that it’s taken me a long time to understand how he does the lefts because he is another level and a half,” Marquez’s former crew chief Frankie Carchedi told the Crash MotoGP Podcast last year.

“I’ve understood what he does and how he does it; whether you can explain it and someone else can do it is another story. I’m sure other people have seen his data and tried to replicate it, but it’s one thing understanding what he does and another thing replicating. But he does thing that I’m sure there are a lot of people looking at the screen and going ‘hmm’.”

It’s telling that Marquez’s losses at COTA have all been at the hands of either a crash or a technical issue, as was the case in 2022, rather than being outperformed.

Does anyone have any hope of beating Marc Marquez at COTA?

That latter point suggests Marquez’s perfect start to 2025 is very much set to continue barring any dramas. But perhaps the threat his brother Alex Marquez has posed in the first two rounds could well keep him on his toes.

Alex Marquez was only just under a second away from beating Marc in the sprint in Argentina and was marginally faster on average for the time he led the grand prix at Termas de Rio Hondo before being overtaken again.

While in clean air Marc Marquez was able to clear away by 1.362s, he noted something curious after the race that could well make Alex Marquez a bigger threat at COTA than anticipated.

“He was flowing a lot and honestly speaking every lap I was thinking about Turn 6, because it was a left corner and I said ‘it’s not possible that he is faster than me there’,” Marc Marquez said after the Argentina GP.

“But he was. And I tried different lines and different ways to open the gas and different ways to put the body. But every lap he was faster there. In some corners he was faster, but Turn 6 was the one I was thinking about all the race how to improve.”

Alex Marquez’s record in America is pretty poor, though. In the MotoGP class he has failed to crack the top 10 at COTA, while he has just one podium at the circuit, which came back in 2018 in the Moto2 class. His only other podium finish in the country was at the 2013 Indianapolis GP while he was still in Moto3.

So, history is not on the younger Marquez brother’s side coming into this weekend. But the momentum in 2025 is as much with him as it is Marc Marquez. It will take a lot topple the factory Ducati rider, but Alex Marquez appears to be the best placed coming to America this weekend.