We love Japan! And we love the Japanese fans. Everyone always sees the rider-fans wanting to give their favourite star a gift, but at Motegi, one fan honoured his favourite journalist by gifting Jack Appleyard a ceramic apple – with a cartoon journo on it.
Top tier kawaii creativity!
By The Karr report.
It was a weekend of speculation over whether Marc Márquez would be crowned champion at Motegi. But all that hogwash aside, did everyone see the special helmets some riders cooked up for the Japanese GP? Amongst them was Marc, with a beauty of a lid.
Moto3:
We welcome back a (mostly) healed Bertelle to the Moto3 grid, after six months of healing from a proper Motocross clattering.
No Carraro this weekend – the Italian withdrew due to being under the weather.
A handful of riders were slapped with penalties for cruising in the fast lane during Q2: Pini was handed a Double Long Lapper, while Almansa and Foggia both had to move to the back of the grid.
All this promoted SA’s Moodley up into nineteenth.
But wait – did someone mention the weather?
It started off hot and cloudy, with no warning of rain pre-start. But don’t get too comfortable with that no-rain prediction, folks…
Aditama slipped out of the mid-pack melee at Turn Three during the opening lap.
By Lap Two, people were shouting ‘spots of rain!’ like they’d never experienced this phenomenon before.
Dettwiler had such a fright, he crashed out at the third corner moments after the rain was announced.
When the race entered its fifth lap, the rain was getting worse while the sunshine blazed down just a spitting distance away. Carpe was trying feverishly to get Race Direction to stop the race so he could get out of the rain, by raising his hand multiple times. Sorry, Álvaro, but that’s not how this works.
Japanese local, Furusato, exited the race by Lap Nine when his motorcycle turned into a mechanical bull, bucking and sending him flying out of Turn Two. As he slid off the track, he narrowly avoided being ironed flat by his approaching bike.
He got back on, tried to continue the race, only to fall off under the bridge beyond Turn Five. Bike enter shadow with rider, bike exit shadow sans rider.
Taiyo’s nonchalant stroll out of the shadow mid-track gave us anxiety, though it did admittedly look kinda cool.
During Lap Nine, the rain which initially become heavier soon ceased to fall, and the sun burned away the leftover wetness from the track.
Ogden was ordered to drop one position after overtaking while a yellow flag was waving in his face.
As Piqueras dipped into Turn Ten for the thirteenth time in the race, the front of his motorcycle made like a weak ankle, giving way underneath him and sent him sliding off.
Allegedly, Almansa and Ogden both crashed on the penultimate lap, around Turn Five. Did they crash together, or were these solo jobs? We may never know…
One epic race later, Muñoz emerged victorious, followed closely by Rueda in second, and Quiles in third.
Moodley finished the race in the same position he’d pulled off in, namely nineteenth.
Imagine focusing so hard on racing, that you forget that it’s the final lap? That was exactly what Quiles laughingly admitted he’d done, realising only a few corners from the finish line that he might be on the last lap.
Moto2:
Baltus celebrated his one-hundredth Grand Prix start this weekend. Congrats, Barry!
Both Aji and Navarro were punted nine positions back on the grid for dawdling during Qualifying.
About four or five corners into the race, Van den Goorbergh went out wide, crashing as a result.
Almost simultaneously, Muñoz went tumbleweeding out of Turn Five.
During Lap Four, Agius left the track at Turn Three for his dirt-bath baptism, emerging from it absolutely covered in the stuff.
In the wake of a miffy start, González, driven by Red Mist, launched an overtaking attack on Vietti through Turn Ten from way too far back. As he passed, he clipped the Italian’s right handlebar (and hand, probably), sending Vietti sprawling into the kitty litter.
While Vietti limped his bike to the pits, González was slapped with a Long Lap Penalty for his over-aggression.
While grabbing fifth place, going through Turn Five on the Fifth lap, Guevara toppled over all on his own. Here we thought it was triple six that was a bad number. Turns out it’s triple five.
Near the end of the same lap, we lost Roberts.
Arbolino had a leather-soiling moment on Lap Ten, but managed to avoid crashing.
Binder went off on Lap Eleven, exiting the race dusty, but physically unscathed.
Up at the sharp end, Holgado had disappeared over the horison, his lead so vast he had time for a trackside biscuit-break on the last lap, and still clenched the victory.
Dixon finished second, and Moreira third.
We’d noticed early on in the race – as did anyone watching – that Arbolino was suffering with his right arm constantly moving in odd ways.
This was confirmed when he couldn’t rip off his right glove fast enough after crossing under the checkered flag.
MotoGP:
Sprint Race:
It sure didn’t take long for things to go south in the Saturday Sprint. As the pack entered the first corner for the first time, riders were seen launched up into the territory of the drone cameras.
Upon further inspection, Martín was found guilty of starting the whole thing, shooting down the inside of the corner with zero hope of exiting it upright. He went down on his right side hard enough to trigger a light earthquake, before headbutting his teammate Bezzecchi with enough force to send Marco, feet first, into temporary orbit.
Both Factory Aprilias and their riders went sliding off to the gravel, forcing a handful of others to scatter so as to avoid a similar fate.
Miraculously, both riders walked away, seemingly okay.
As we all know, these guys are not mere humans: post-race, it was announced that Martín had suffered a ‘displaced fracture of his right collarbone’, and would thus not be in any shape to race on Sunday.
During the eighth lap, Bastianini was spotted pacing around beyond the walls, notably KTM-less. It was soon confirmed that his bike had developed mechanical flu.
Zarco pitted by the end of Lap Ten.
On the final lap, Miller laid down on his left side as he entered Turn Nine, and hop-skidded off towards the kitty litter while remaining in a seated position all the way to the end of the slide.
From pole to checkered flag, Bagnaia led the entire Sprint Race in order to claim his first Sprint victory of 2025. Márquez – the almost-champion-again one – took a leisurely second, while Acosta picked up third.
Binder avoided all the mayhem in order to finish twelfth.
Main Race:
Ogura withdrew moments before the race was due to kick off, due to the pain in his hand from his crash at Misano.
By the time the main race was ready to start, the conspiracy theories had all but suffocated our socials. Why was Pecco so competitive so suddenly? Why didn’t Marc run away with the victory in the Sprint? Where was Álex Márquez all Sprint long?
Yada-yada-ya…
We focus your attention on the race at hand.
Marini’s Honda lasted three laps, at the end of which he was forced to pit so the entire team could stare blankly down at his dash for five minutes straight.
There weren’t many incidents, and Bagnaia repeated what he’d done in the Sprint: bolted off the line, grabbed the lead with both hands (and his teeth), and disappeared.
While riders were navigating the track for the fifteenth time, we all yelled out ‘smoke!’ in unison, as puffs of smoke were spotted coming from Bagnaia’s Ducati.
At first, some thought it was something rubbing against the rear wheel, but courtesy of a super-slow-motion replay, it was made obvious that the white puffs were coming from the exhaust.
Mild panic set in with some fans freezing in place and forgetting to breathe as Pecco continued to set fast laps, seemingly oblivious to the potential threat behind his right boot.
Acosta, struggling for grip, seemed to forget how to brake as he entered Turn One on Lap Nineteen, going full send through the deep, dusty gravel outside of the corner, narrowly avoiding leaving a faceprint of him and his KTM in the wall beyond.
Slowed down a little by the gravel, Acosta turned back towards the track, and sped through to rejoin the race, looking like he was riding on solid tarmac all the way through.
Ten out of ten for his offroading skills.
The Japanese fans lost another local hero when Nakagami, ran off-track just four laps from the finish and slower than a tortoise in a headwind. He plopped down on his side in the pebbles.
On Lap Twenty-Two, Miller was spotted cruising along, his bike’s chain draped over the swingarm and axle, dragging along the tarmac.
Bagnaia claimed his second win of the weekend, with Márquez (Marc, obviously) coming in in second, and Mir snatching up third place.
Binder finished the race in a clean twelfth. Again.
For a while the podium was all but forgotten as Marc deafened any team member dumb enough to be listening in on his microphone with shouts of pure joy. He had officially claimed the 2025 MotoGP World Champion title, the first rider to ever return to being champ after a hiatus of more than five years, and pulling up even with Rossi with a total of seven MotoGP titles.
Emotions were ragged as he rounded the track to where they’d erected a huge black wall with a ‘93’ in the middle. Once there, he walked down the short red carpet until he was in front of the ominous wall… and it changed. Turned out it was a screen, not a wall.
They played a short, serious, passionate documentary on his racing career, Marc standing at first, then sitting down, and standing up once again as he tried to get his emotions under control, and failing miserably.
He bawled. It was genuine emotion. Even his haters had to feel a little compassion for the guy at that point.
Once his mini-documentary was over, Marc returned to his Ducati where a bib was yanked over his head, and he found his Champion-helmet poised on top of his bike. Unlike the now-standard gold helmet, he donned a clean, red chromed lid which we thought looked awesome. We’d hate to own one though; the cleaning would never end.
Upon his arrival in pit lane, he was overpowered by a red sea of Ducati team members, his girlfriend managed to break through the throng in order to give him a congratulatory kiss before he was swallowed by hugs and back-slaps.
When they finally managed to get him to the podium where the newly revamped Tower of Champions awaited, Marc had trouble adding his new plaque to the tower. He did manage, eventually.
And then there was confetti. So. Much. Confetti.
More celebrating, more of Marc almost in tears during his interview with Appleyard.
This was, without any doubt, the biggest Championship win in Marc Márquez’s life.
They did eventually get to the podium, a podium that consisted of three MotoGP World Champions.
PS: It was worth the wait to see Bagnaia realise his Ducati had been smoking like a vaper for most of the race. He had no clue.
No ‘lectrics at Aragon, folks.
With the MotoGP title decided, we move on to the next venue with three titles still in play: Moto3, Moto2, and the final MotoE title for the foreseeable future.
~ Karr
