Here is the thing about modern MotoGP: Saturdays are where championships are truly made, and nobody understands that better than Marc Marquez. As Motorsport.com reports, the factory Ducati rider is all but certain to lock down his 10th world championship crown at the upcoming Portuguese Grand Prix. That he rules the short-distance format is old news, but the sheer weight of his Saturday performances this season is nothing short of staggering.
Across the opening 20 weekends, Marquez stacked up an incredible 164 points in sprints alone, averaging 8.2 points per race, or 8.5 when factoring in his absence from the Barcelona sprint. Compare that to the 267 points he collected across the 18 grands prix he contested, excluding Le Mans and Barcelona. It means his Saturday haul equals more than 60% of his Sunday tally, even though full grands prix hand out more than twice the points for a win.
Now, look at how that destroys the competition. Jorge Martin, riding for Aprilia Racing Team, is no slouch in the short format and managed four sprint wins this year. Yet Marquez still outscored him by 45 points on Saturdays. Strip away the sprint races entirely, and Marquez and Martin would be separated by a razor-thin 15 points in the standings, leaving the title fight wide open heading into the final two rounds.
The contrast becomes even wilder when you look at Marco Bezzecchi, racing for Aprilia Racing. Bezzecchi managed seven sprint podiums, but he only scraped together 80 points on Saturdays—less than half of Marquez's total. Even with a nightmare four-round spell of zero scores across June and July due to his own mistakes in Sunday races, Bezzecchi somehow outscored Marquez on Sundays. Purely on grand prix results, Bezzecchi would actually be leading the championship by 10 points instead of trailing Marquez by 74.
Marquez's ruthless Saturday approach has repeatedly forced Aprilia to play catch-up when Sunday rolled around. While he may lack the physical strength to repeat his 2025 heroics, his mastery of the sprint format has given him an insurmountable edge. Saturday after Saturday, the beast from Ducati made the short races his own, and the title fight was over before the main event even started.
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