Marc Marquez: "Big surprise when Maverick overtook, I thought it was Acosta!"

A dominant victory for Marc Marquez is something that feels normal by now in 2025, but even the MotoGP Qatar Grand Prix had surprises in it for the eight-time World Champion.

Coming into the weekend, it had been expected that, following his victory in Austin, Francesco Bagnaia could continue to build his momentum on a circuit he won at in 2024, and where Marquez hadn’t won since 2014.

But, in the end, it was Marquez who again proved superior, taking his third victory of the season.

Based on the pre-weekend narrative, the victory could be seen as a surprise, but the real shock for Marquez himself was Maverick Vinales, who led five laps in the middle of the race and crossed the line second before being demoted to 14th via a 16-second penalty for breaching front tyre pressure rules.

Marquez said that initially he thought Vinales was Pedro Acosta; an understandable mistake given the similarities between the factory KTM team's livery and that of the Tech3 KTM team.

“It was a big surprise when Maverick [Vinales] overtook me – at one time I thought it was Acosta because normally he is the fastest KTM, but then when I saw it was Maverick it was a great surprise, he was super-fast,” Marquez said.

“But I had that margin for the end, these last two or three tenths.”

Marquez said that he was managing the front tyre in the first part of the race, which was led by Franco Morbidelli between laps one and 10, but began to push when he was passed by his Ducati Lenovo teammate Bagnaia on lap five.

“[I knew before the race] I need to manage the front tyre,” said Marquez in his post-race TV interview.

“So, for that reason, in the first part of the race I was quiet; Morbidelli was going but I predicted, or I understood yesterday with the rhythms, that he would not be fast in the second part of the race.

“But then, when Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia] overtook me I said ‘Okay, now the race starts,’ and I started to push.”

Marquez re-passed Bagnaia for second place on lap seven, and ultimately proved to have the strongest pace in the final part of the race, staying in the 1:52s in comparison to Bagnaia who was in the 1:53s from lap 18.

Vinales was the only one able to stay close to Marquez’s late pace, not dropping out of the 1:52s until lap 21, the penultimate lap.