Marc Marquez’s (Ducati Lenovo Team) 2025 title-winning success will live long in the memory. Is it the greatest sporting comeback of all time? We’d say yes (of course). And while the human, injury setback side of the coin is a fascinating and well-documented story to the #93’s championship-winning return, there were also a few records that were notched up along the way.

One of them was Marquez becoming the latest rider – and there haven’t been many in our rich history – to win MotoGP World Championship titles on two manufacturers. In the early days of MotoGP’s absorbing tale, Geoff Duke was the first rider to earn titles on different bikes, Norton and Gilera, with Giacomo Agostini becoming the second to ever do it after the Italian Hall of Fame star backed up his MV Agusta success with a Yamaha title in 1975.

More recently, Eddie Lawson earned back-to-back title victories in 1988 and 1989 with Yamaha and Honda, with the American earning a total of four Championships in the 1980s.

Then, along came Valentino Rossi. 2001-2003 saw ‘The Doctor’ collect three successive MotoGP crowns with Honda, with the Italian putting the Japanese giants back on top following Kenny Roberts Jr’s 2000 title win with Suzuki. Then, as many will know, Rossi made the shock switch to Yamaha for 2004.

And the rest, as they famously say, is history. For much of the 00s period anyway. Rossi handed Yamaha their first title wins since Wayne Rainey’s 1992 success in 2004 and 2005, before Nicky Hayden and another rider we’ll come to talk about, Casey Stoner, halted Rossi’s 00s dominance for a couple of years. 2008 and 2009 saw Rossi return to the peak of his powers, with the latter season ultimately becoming his final title triumph in MotoGP.

Shall we switch our attention to that wickedly fast Australian we mentioned? Stoner’s 2007 Championship victory with Ducati was followed by Yamaha returning to the MotoGP summit with the aforementioned Rossi, and then with Jorge Lorenzo in 2010.

Extracting everything he could from a tricky-to-tame Desmosedici, Stoner switched to Honda for the 2011 campaign and as expected, it was a match made in heaven. Stoner won 10 of the 17 Grands Prix in his first season with HRC to hand them their first taste of a title win since Rossi, and after the Australian sent shockwaves through the MotoGP – and sporting – world by announcing his premature retirement at the end of 2012, it paved the way for a rapidly rising Spanish star to jump into Honda’s factory seat.

That, of course, was Marc Marquez. 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Vintage Marquez. Simply unstoppable, until Jerez bit hard. Then came four years of literal blood, sweat, and tears. The four right humerus surgeries. The crashes. The close to retirement thoughts.

Then the switch to Ducati arrived, and it has simply reignited Marquez’s career. A first Grand Prix win in 1043 days in Gresini’s blue, and an outrageously good debut season donning Ducati’s famous factory red that saw the title secured in Japan, with five Grands Prix still to play for. Along with everything else that was achieved in the seventh MotoGP title victory, placing his name alongside the likes of Stoner, Rossi, Lawson, Agostini and Duke is a stat to be incredibly proud of.

And in the present, another injury setback arrived in Indonesia for the World Champion. But there’s no doubt about it – Marc Marquez will be the rider to beat in 2026.