The message Marquez’s race pace sent to MotoGP rivals

Marc Marquez completed a sprint simulation on the final day of MotoGP testing at Sepang, sending out a clear message to his rivals with his incredible pace.

Riding the factory Ducati during the afternoon on Friday, Marquez averaged a time of 1m57.930s over a 10-lap run, comfortably outpacing the entire field, including his team-mate Francesco Bagnaia.

Marquez set seven laps in the 1m57s bracket and only three in the 1m58s, with his best time during that stint being 1m57.641s and the slowest being 1m58.272s. With that speed and consistency, he would have easily beaten Jorge Martin to victory in last year’s sprint race at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Interestingly, Marquez’s younger brother and Gresini rider Alex was the closest to him on long-run pace. Having already set the outright pace on Friday, Alex Marquez clocked three laps in the mid-1m57s, going faster than the six-time MotoGP champion on each occasion, but more than half of his 10 laps were in the 1m58s bracket.

Bagnaia’s pace was in the 1m58s, with the double champion only dipping into the 1m57s twice in his race simulation.

Here’s how Marquez’s long-run pace in the Sepang test compares with that of Martin in the sprint race at the same track in 2024. Marquez’s lap times from the same Sepang sprint race have also been added, in which he finished second, nine tenths behind Martin.

Marquez completed a total of 70 laps on Friday, the most of any rider during the day, and even beat rookie Somkiat Chantra’s tally of 68 from Thursday.

In those 70 laps, where he covered a little over 388km, Marquez posted a best time of 1m57.042s, which put him fifth and just behind the VR46 Ducati of Franco Morbidelli, who lapped the circuit just fractionally quicker in 1m56.948s.

During the day, Marquez completed the said 70 laps over 13 runs. During his fifth run, the Spaniard put the bike in time attack mode and posted two rapid laps – 1m57.086s and 1m57.042s.

Later in the afternoon, in his 10th run, he completed his race simulation with 10 fast laps in high-1m57s and low-1m58s.

Marquez had previously completed 54 laps on Wednesday and another 45 on Thursday until his late crash at Turn 9. Over the course of the test, he completed a total of 169 laps around the Sepang circuit, which adds up to 939km.

Marquez also got to test for the factory Ducati team at the Barcelona test in November, where he racked up 49 laps on a prototype bike. Thus, the 31-year-old has now accumulated 1,166 kilometres of mileage as an official Ducati rider.