Back at the 2024 Thai GP, the setting for our first stop on the 2025 wheels turning in anger tour, Ducati Lenovo Team’s Marc Marquez was asked about whether he regretted not leaving Honda earlier after he’d won his third race of the season a few days before in Australia.

“Ha, no, no,” was the immediate, expected response. Marquez is the most decorated rider on the current grid with eight World Championship titles. Six of those came in MotoGP™, all collected with Honda. It’s a well-documented story that saw the #93 quickly rise to Grand Prix racing’s summit. And the Marquez-Honda partnership sat at MotoGP's peak until 2020.

Then came that Jerez crash. Little did we, Marquez or Honda know how much of an impact that broken right humerus would have on the coming years. After four surgeries – the final, career-saving operation happening in 2022 – Marquez finally felt comfortable on a motorcycle again. But by then, HRC’s RC213V was becoming a trickier beast to control. Even an eight-time World Champion regularly struggled to use his superpowers to tame the Japanese thoroughbred, with the tipping point coming at the 2023 German GP. 

The unrivalled King of the Sachsenring crashed five times in one weekend. The last of which ruled him out of Sunday's race and the following Grand Prix weekend in Assen. It was then that we all saw Marquez arrive at a career-defining crossroads. And as we now know, retiring was a genuine route. 

“With Honda we achieved a lot and I feel part of Honda. Still, right now I’m riding a Ducati and next year I will be a Ducati rider. Of course, I will try to defend Ducati colours. But Honda has been and will be a very important part of my career, or maybe the most important part - you never know,” continued Marquez, in response to answering the question put to him in Buriram.

“But I was saying when I was in Honda, because sometimes they’d say, ‘No, because Honda is Honda, he is winning for Honda’. There were the other Hondas. If you are a good rider and go to Honda and say, ‘I don’t care about the money, just I want to ride the best bike’, they will give to you the best bike if you are a good rider.

“In this case I did the opposite. I went to Ducati and I said, ‘I don’t care about anything, I just want to ride the best bike’. Now in the future when I retire I will be at peace with myself because I tried everything.”

Obviously, when the news officially dropped that Marc Marquez would be moving to an Independent Team (Gresini Racing) Ducati, to race on a year-old bike, from the factory Honda squad, it took millions around the world a lot of getting used to. 

But it’s something the Spaniard needed to do. As he said, he’ll be “at peace” with himself when his career ends knowing he tried everything he felt he had to do to prolong his racing career that wasn't too far away from drawing to a premature close. 

“Of course, when you do that kind of move you put a lot of pressure on yourself and there can be a lot of negative comments if you don’t achieve what you want,” continued Marquez.

“But I already achieved what I wanted. The target was to try and lengthen my career and try to be competitive again. Then, if I win another title this will be something in another hand. But my main goal is already achieved.”

And competitive is exactly what Marquez has been since making the bombshell switch. Naturally, everyone expected 2024 to be a successful year for the #93. One of the greatest – and in many people’s eyes the very best – riders of all time, switching to the fastest manufacturer currently on the grid? That’s a recipe for results. And three wins, seven other podiums and a P3 in the Championship equalled a good year in his new office. 

2025 is different though. Last season on a GP23 in Gresini colours, it quickly became apparent that Marquez, his fellow GP23 riders and the rest of the grid who weren’t at the controls of Ducati’s near-perfect GP24 were going to have an uphill struggle to beat eventual World Champion Jorge Martin, three-time World Champion Pecco Bagnaia and on some occasions, the latter’s now former teammate Enea Bastianini.

That’s not the case this year. Marquez dons red alongside Bagnaia. Same tools, same team. The eight-time Champ challenged for wins and podiums regularly in 2024, but fighting for that elusive ninth Championship win will be the target number one in 2025.

Marquez’s main goal of being competitive has already been achieved. But heading into the new season, that title-hunting fire will be reignited. A flame shaped like a number nine will be burning brightly from within, and it's a story we're all impatiently waiting to see unfold.