Marco Bezzecchi
Toprak Razgatlioglu says Marc Marquez rides the Ducati MotoGP bike ‘more calmly’ than he rode the Honda in the past.
Marquez spent the first 11 seasons of his MotoGP career at Honda before switching to Ducati satellite team Gresini in 2024. He then joined the factory squad at the start of 2025.
Marquez won his seventh premier-class title last season in emphatic fashion, taking victory in 11 of the 18 Grands Prix he started to clinch the crown with five races to spare.
Marc Marquez has never come back from a deficit larger than 37 points
With the gap to Marco Bezzecchi now 44, are his title hopes over?
Toprak Razgatlioglu says Marc Marquez is no longer as ‘aggressive’
In an interview with Moto IT, Pramac debutant Razgatlioglu was asked for his impressions of MotoGP’s top riders after moving from World Superbikes. His main takeaway is that their equipment is far superior to his Yamaha, which is currently the slowest bike on the grid.
But following Marquez on track has only cemented his theory that the Spaniard is now much less ‘aggressive’. He only suffered three DNFs in 36 starts last year, and one of those (the season-ending tangle with Marco Bezzecchi in Indonesia) wasn’t his fault.
Marquez knows he isn’t as ‘explosive’ as he once was, but has talked about learning to manage risks. He crashed 14 times overall last season, fewer than 11 riders.
“It’s not easy for me to understand,” said Razgatlioglu. “I follow Marc, Alex Marquez, Fabio [Quartararo], and many others. What I see is that their bikes turn better, have more grip, brake better, and exit corners much faster.
Do you agree with Toprak Razgatlioglu’s analysis of Marc Marquez?
“In certain sectors, I’m fast, I’m strong, but in others it’s impossible to keep up with them because the grip and behaviour of the bike are completely different. I only fight on half the track; on the other half they’re completely out of control because the bike works much better. But I don’t see any absurd differences.
“Ducati is Ducati, and Marquez is a special rider, but he’s also changed his style in the last two years: he rides more calmly, he’s understood how the bike works. Before, he rode much more aggressively.”
Is Marc Marquez slipping back into bad habits on the 2026 Ducati?
Marquez has already crashed five times this season. If he keeps up the current rate of accidents, he will reach almost 30 by the end of the year.
The reigning world champion is not yet fully comfortable on the Ducati GP26 and the consensus is that he’s also lacking fitness after his shoulder surgery last autumn.
It may be that Marquez is trying to overcompensate by pushing beyond the limit, a weakness he occasionally showed at Honda.
The 33-year-old crashed out of the Spanish GP last weekend from second and also earned himself a race-altering long lap penalty in the US for an overly ambitious lunge on Fabio Di Giannantonio in the Sprint.
These errors have hampered Marquez’s damage limitation effort at the start of the year, with Bezzecchi and Aprilia currently the benchmark in MotoGP.
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