A historic comeback
In just four rounds, since after the Mugello weekend, Marc Marquez has done something rarely seen in the history of motorcycling reducing his gap from the top of the championship from 102 to 18 points. At the halfway point of the season, despite having effectively missed two races due to injury and still being far from the best possible physical condition, the Ducati phenomenon is fully in the running to win his eighth MotoGP title, the tenth of his career.
Read more Drivers and Constructors Standings after the 6 Hours of São Paulo 2026
A similar comeback was successfully made by Francesco Bagnaia in 2022, when he recovered a 92-point gap from Fabio Quartararo in ten races in the last season that still did not include Sprints. It must be said, however, that Pecco’s Ducati in the second half of the season was clearly better than Quartararo’s Yamaha in terms of performance, while this year Aprilia and Ducati are at a rather similar level, with the advantage shifting from one bike to the other depending on the tracks.
Rossi’s 2006
For this reason, perhaps a comeback similar to Marquez’s this year – despite the inevitable differences due to the two decades that have passed – could be the one attempted, almost completed, and then spectacularly failed by Valentino Rossi in 2006.
Everyone remembers the head-to-head battle between Rossi and the late Nicky Hayden in that championship, who ultimately won the World Championship in the grand finale in Valencia, but it should not be forgotten that also Capirossi, Melandri, and Pedrosa contested the title that season, so much so that these five riders at the end of the championship were within just 37 points of each other. A situation closely resembling this year’s, in which at mid-season the top eight riders in the standings are within 65 points.
Read more Leapmotor, record deliveries worldwide in June
The Doctor outwitted
It must be said that Rossi, unlike Marquez, never fell more than 100 points behind the top of the standings: after five GPs out of 17 scheduled – in an era when a maximum of 25 points could be scored in a weekend – his gap from Hayden was already 43 points. Six races from the end of the World Championship, after the Laguna Seca Grand Prix, Rossi even had more than two Grand Prix gaps from the American, being 51 points behind, in a context where three manufacturers – Honda, Ducati, and Yamaha – had bikes capable of winning. Rossi also did not have the physical problems that Marquez has this year, but he was penalized by the numerous reliability issues of his Yamaha, which do not affect Marquez’s Desmosedici GP26 at all.
Considering these elements, the feat Rossi accomplished to arrive in Valencia leading the World Championship – recovering 51 points from Hayden in five races and arriving at the final appointment in Spain with an 8-point lead – can be compared to the streak of results achieved by Marquez between June and July to fully get back on track for the title win. Rossi ultimately failed due to the crash that effectively took him out of the running in the early laps of the Valencia race; we will see if Marquez’s remuntada will have a better fate than that of his historic rival.
Read more Mitsubishi focuses on humanoid robots equipped with AI
