The 2025 Motul Grand Prix of Japan in Motegi is incontrovertible evidence that proves MotoGP is one of the greatest motorsports shows on the Planet. Sure, it wasn’t the most action-packed MotoGP race ever or in 2025, but the storylines it exhibited alone make it one of the best Grand Prixs ever, or at the very least, in the modern era.
Why do you ask?, Well, let me put it this way: not just motorsports, but any sports in general manage to connect the audience not just through the sheer athleticism exhibited by their athletes, but one of the core hooks of any sports is the emotional factor and background narrative of a person that touches the audience on a more emotional level – making these epitome of peak human performance more relatable to us more conventional human beings.
MotoGP is among such sports that have some sort of a storyline going on all across the grid. Not just the riders who are the poster boys of the series, but every figure involved in the sport is dealing with some sort of battle of their own. Be it a financial turmoil a team is going through, or an injured rider struggling to perform, or a rider who’s battling his own emotional demons to perform at the very best he is known for.
The 2025 Japanese Grand Prix, held at Motegi, became the battleground for some of these battles that were won. The Top three finishers of the Grand Prix are all World Champions – Pecoo Bagnaia, Marc Marquez, and Joan Mir – and interestingly enough, all three of them overcame and conquered something much more important than a podium finish or a win on that faithful day in Japan.
A short disclaimer: This is not a race review or an analytical piece on the Grand Prix, but a letter from a fan of the sport to the audience, highlighting what made the Japanese GP one of the best this season and perhaps acts as an argument to establish what makes MotoGP special.
Joan Mir (P3)
2020 World Champion Joan Mir had quite a decent first few years in the championship on board the Suzuki GSX-RR, amassing multiple podiums and a win, but more importantly, he clinched the MotoGP world title in 2020, in only his second year in the premier class while riding the GSX-RR.
Post-Championship things were still quite giddy for the world champion, with his Suzuki squad scoring occasional podiums and consistently challenging for the wins. But things took a turn, where everything started to unravel for Mir when, at the end of 2022, Suzuki announced that they would not be continuing their Moto GP project any further, citing financial constraints and other key projects.
Leaving Joan Mir without a ride for the 2023 season, but being a world champion does come with some cache, so he promptly found a place at Honda’s factory team alongside none other than Marc Marquez. Much like his predecessors at Honda, Joan Mir struggled to tame the untamable RC213V, which even started to feel quite handily in the hands of Marc Marquez, who won 6 titles on board the RC213V.
The Plagued bike and constant pressure to match Marc Marquez got to Mir; he spent his previous two years with the Honda more on the gravel than being on the bike. Just look at the current season, with only 17 out of 22 rounds completed so far, Joan Mir has crashed 18 times, both in the sprint and in the Main race. And to top it all, he was bested by Honda’s Satellite team riders Alex Rins and Johan Zarco, who won a race each with the bike, when Mir struggled to drag the bike for a top 4 finish, let alone a podium.
Constant crashes and although on sheer performance Mir was still the best rider for the Honda post Marc Marquez, failure to bring a substantial result while his Honda colleagues with a lesser team bringing home occasional victories and podium finishes, and in the past two and a half years with the Honda made people question authentucity of his championship and some went as far as calling him a fraud champion, all this must have gotten to him.
But he persevered, slowly but surely bringing the RC213V back to form; his constant crashes while trying to find the limit paid off with the development of the bike. In 2025, RC213V saw a comeback to form with Johan Zarco winning the rain-lashed French Grand Prix earlier this year and a podium finish in the British Grand Prix, but both of these results have an asterisk in front of them; both of these came under some peculiar circumstances and track conditions.
In Motegi, Japan, Mir but all those speculations to end regarding him and the Honda, when he qualified on the front row and finished 3rd in the race, fighting off the bikes that were consistently much faster this season on pure pace, assisted by no on-track drama or weather anomalies, on his way to the third place he fought off the faster ducati’s, KTMs and Aprilia’s, indicating that Honda and Mir both are on back on pure pace and can match the best there is on the MotoGP grid, all while ending his two and a half year drought of podiums.
Marc Marquez (P2) and a Championship
Although Marc didn’t win the race, he won something more coveted than a single Grand Prix win – He won the 2025 MotoGP world title at Motegi, Japan. Although his charge for the title this year looked pretty simple, as he was challenged for it, it is no secret to anyone that Marc had to deal with his fair share of demons in the past couple of years.
A career-threatening injury that ruled him out for the 2020 season and hampered his subsequent season with constant surgeries and other life-threatening crashes – it was almost like the post-2020 Marc Marquez is gone, and critics have written him off for the rest of his career, calling him a washed champion and the best years of his career are now in the past. which Marc admitted multiple times that such criticism and constant surgeries to fix his injuries did get to him and made him question his position on the grid, and the fact that his Honda RC213V was perpetually trying to kill him didn’t help.
At the end of the 2023 season, Marc Marquez finally pulled the plug on his time with the Honda Factory squad and decided to join the Gresini Ducati team for free, just so that he could prove to himself that he could still win on a bike that doesn’t want to kill him every time he pulls the throttle. A year on the satellite Ducati was enough for Ducati’s bosses to promote Marc at the factory team alongside the 2x world champion Pecco Bagnaia for the 2025 season, and fast forward to now, Marc Marquez is the 2025 World champion with races to spare. On his way to the title, Marc completely obliterated the field by one of the biggest margins in the history of the championship.
Despite winning 6 MotoGP titles and 2 world titles in the lower class, it was quite clear from all the loud wailing and sobbing post-race, which is quite new for Marc Marquez, that this championship perhaps meant more to him than his previous triumphs. As was evident by his post-race interviews, he needed this championship more so that he could prove to himself that he’s still the best there is, rather than to shut down the critics, which eventually did after the first few rounds of the season.
Pecco Bagnaia (P1)
2x MotoGP champion Pecco Bagnaia was the golden boy for the Ducati squad when he joined them at the start of the 2021 season, where he immediately started winning multiple races each season and eventually bagging back-to-back world titles for the Bologna squad, and the only one in Ducati’s history to win two titles for them.
Pecco Bagnaia was the force to be reckoned with in the modern MotoGP era, even during his failed campaign last year, where he lost out to Jorge Martin in the final race of the season for the world title, he still managed to win 11 Grand Prix. With Jorge Martin leaving the Ducati fold for the Aprilia squad and new to the Ducati factory team, Marc Marquez was set to join Pecco for the 2025 campaign, the anticipation was that Pecco, being the reliable talisman he was for the Ducati, will be giving Marc Marquez run for his money and challenge for the victories at the very least, but the reality was quite opposite.
Pecco had an abysmal start to the season, struggling to get to grips with the Ducati GP25 derailed his entire season, whereas Marc Marquez took to the GP25 like a fish to the water, and dominated the entire season so far and eventually winning the championship, whereas Pecco was seen struggling to even collect the scraps behind Marc because he was bested by another Marquez brother – Alex, on a year old Ducati GP24 who now sit P2 in the championship behind the Champion Marc Marquez and ahead of Pecco Bagnaia.
A sudden fall from grace and unable to find the right feeling on the bike to attack the corners the way he used to or the way Marquez is seen doing, shattered Pecco’s 2025 season, and with each passing weekend, it was quite evident on Pecco’s face that he is lost, and has no real path to follow to get back to his winning ways. With each passing session, the ever cheerful Pecco Bagnaia looked down and depressed, with seemingly no sign of light at the end of the tunnel.
That is, until Motegi last weekend, where Pecco found his mojo back and evidently got back his lost feeling from the GP25, from free practice to the final lap of the Grand Prix, Pecco Bagnaia was the man to beat, which was quite reminiscent of his previous years. He led the grand Prix from start to finish, and even a technical issue that saw bundles of smoke coming out of his GP25’s secondary exhaust couldn’t stop him from taking the chequered flag in P1.
Alas, the old Pecco Bagnaia was back, the 2x world champion, the most successful Ducati rider in MotoGP, proved to the world why he is all those things and more, and not just to the world but to himself that if he can find the right settings on the bike, he can go toe to toe with MotoGP’s greatest talent ever.
Conclusion
Pecco Bagnaia might be the eventual winner of the Japanese Grand Prix – but for that brief moment when the flag was waved at the end of the final lap, all three of the podium finishers were the winners that day – Pecco proving himself and the world why he is Ducati’s most succesfull rider, Marc establoshing his iconic comeback perhaps one of the finest in any sports let alone in motorsports and Joan Mir finally getting the reward for his patience and injuries he pesevered all these years.
Yes, it wasn’t the most action-packed Grand Prix of the season, but the stories it uncovered, the smiles and tears it bore at the end, make it one of the most important Grand Prixs in the history of MotoGP. Perhaps no other Grand Prix event has so far established the sheer emotions that MotoGP and its fans embody. Stories that make you want to invest your time, to root for these superhuman athletes just so that you see them triumph for that one single moment, not for the numbers, not for the records, not for the glory, but to see them overcome the same demons of self-doubt and criticism each one of us goes through in our lives, and perhaps be an inspiration for us to overcome our battles.
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