Marquez, double disaster: Marc punctures, Alex crashes

One retirement leads to another

Two retirements within one lap and the family that dominated MotoGP in 2025 finds itself empty-handed in the first race of the 2026 World Championship. With a quite sensational double twist, both Marc Marquez and Alex Marquez retired from the Thailand GP just seconds apart, breaking a positive streak that had been going since the 2024 Japanese GP, where at least one of the two brothers always scored championship points in Sunday’s GP. This time, however, it was a disaster across the board.

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Puncture and crash

The first to retire was Marc, who was tooth and nail defending a fourth place that was anything but negligible given the clear difficulty Ducati faced this weekend in Buriram. However, the reigning world champion was forced to stop during the 21st lap due to a rear tire puncture. An incident that – at least apparently – is similar to the one that knocked out Francesco Bagnaia last year in Malaysia. In Marquez’s case, however, the puncture was even more spectacular and dangerous, with the tire completely coming off the rim, risking sending the #93 flying to the ground.

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Hardly enough time to process what had happened before the second blow to the family’s ambitions arrived: Alex, in fact, who was having a disappointing race with the GP26 entrusted to the Gresini team and was languishing in ninth position, slid out. A crash that fortunately had no physical consequences for the world runner-up, but which certainly left some scars on the Spaniard’s morale, as he started his 2026 championship campaign with a double zero between the Sprint and the GP. Who would have imagined it just a few months ago.

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