Alex Marquez down in Q1 for first time in MotoGP 2025, boosting Marc’s title hopes

Alex Marquez has been one of the strongest qualifying performers of the season, but a scruffy Friday means he will have to go through Q1 in Japan

Alex Marquez failed to earn a direct passage into Q2 for the first time in the 2025 MotoGP season, boosting his brother Marc Marquez’s chances of sealing the title in this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.

The Marquez brothers had been the only riders this season to safely reach the second leg of qualifying at each round based on their pace in Friday practice alone.

However, while Marc Marquez was able to jump to third in the final order after sitting in the drop zone for much of the session, Gresini rider Alex Marquez wasn’t so fortunate as he ended a distant 15th in the timesheets, 0.591s off the pace set by Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi.

The 29-year-old had been running 23rd and last at the halfway point of the session, with a crash at Turn 9 preventing him from setting a competitive lap time on the board.

Jumping on his second bike, he set the fifth-fastest lap with eight minutes to go, but a late flurry of improvements left him tumbling outside the top 10. Yellow flags and a slow final tour sealed his fate in a frantic, incident-packed session.

The Spaniard highlighted that he had been struggling to stop his Ducati GP24, but felt there was no reason for him to start panicking over a lack of pace.

“We are not in Q2 for half a tenth, so it's not a lot, but it's like it is,” he said, referring to the gap to 10th-placed Johann Zarco.

“We were a little bit unlucky in the second time attack for the yellow flags and even went wide at Turn 3, but Q1 will be an opportunity to have 15 minutes more on track to understand things better.

“Still many problems, especially with the front going in, entry, how to stop the bike until the end."

He added: "I'm having a hard time stopping the bike. I'm not entering the corner properly and then I'm carrying all these problems. There's no need to panic; we're missing out on Q2 by half a tenth."

Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing

Photo by: Toshifumi Kitamura / AFP via Getty Images

The younger Marquez has qualified on the front row in 12 out of the 16 rounds so far, including a second career pole in the Catalan Grand Prix.

The Spaniard believes he doesn’t need to pull something special out of the bag in order to continue his strong qualifying form into Motegi.

“We don't need to find some magic, we [just] need to put everything together,” he said. “It's true that we are coming from a track that is Misano, where the grip level is super high, where everything is working well, you change the bike and it's working the same way.

“So we need to adapt a little bit more and that's it.

“We need to be aggressive, we need to be positive, don't lose the nerves, be patient and just try to be a little bit more clever tomorrow.”