Neil Hodgson Column: This Marc Marquez MotoGP title comeback could be the greatest of his career

After about a month away, the riders have had the chance to recharge, and shake off any fatigue, burnout or nagging injuries, so we can expect a brilliant finish to the season.

Even if you love racing, the relentless nature of the challenge can wear you down, so we should be looking forward to a refreshed group of riders ahead of Grand Prix Great Britain, live on TNT Sport and HBO Max.

In some ways it’s predictable, but I’m going for Marquez to win this weekend. He’s had three weekends off and a chance to recover from his injuries.

He’ll have worked on his fitness, and this race is a chance to make a huge statement. A win here confirms his momentum, and confirms he’s in charge of this title race.

Yes, he has only one win here to his name in MotoGP, but, as we’ll discuss, the Spaniard is the king of comebacks - and this could be his best one yet.

Silverstone is one of the best races of the season, so it’s the right setting for him to make another impression on the riders around him.

It’s almost like the track has been built for a MotoGP race. It’s really wide. It’s fast and it’s flowing. It’s the polar opposite of the last round at the Sachsenring, the last time we had a run-out.

There are only a couple of gripes here.

One, there’s no elevation. It’s completely flat, which can be a bit boring, and the other is the weather. It can be wet and cold, and that’s just not the type of challenge that suits any bike. This weekend, it’s not going to be an issue, so we’ll get the best out of the track.

I’ve been a bit predictable by lumping on Marquez, but I think Trackhouse GP’s Ai Ogura could be the closest challenger. It’s a track he likes, and, like Marquez, he’s a man in form. He’ll be really impressive.

I think Alex Marquez on his Gresini could offer the same. I’d have to give a nod to any rider on an Aprilia this weekend, too, including Marco Bezzecchi.

Having said that, I’m concerned for Marco. Since Mugello, where he won in dominant, looming fashion, he has 13 points from a possible 148, while Marquez has added a ton.

However, he won here last year, but you imagine his confidence is battered. Crashes, bans and a broken collarbone are not something that most riders just shrug off. He will have to come out of the blocks on fire on Friday to convince himself that the season is not leaving him behind.

While Bezzecchi will need to prove to himself, the fans, his employers and the media that he can cope with the pressure, we know that Marquez has shown his mettle so many times it’s now hard to pick one defining comeback.

There have been so many, and he’s done it in a sport where a setback can kill you, or injure you in a way to affect you for the rest of your life. Because of that, and because of the money that comes with success in MotoGP, it’s not easy to maintain your motivation.

Marquez probably has all the money he needs to live his life several times over, but he has the desire.

Tomorrow, he’ll be going out on the track, and not just risking his race weekend, but his career and his life. He is only doing this because this is the thing he wants to do more than all the other chances he could be exploring right now.

People don’t really understand that when he came back from that horrendous arm injury, he’d already beaten the odds. Then he won the championship last year - that was doubling down on the challenge.

That he is now threatening a 10th world championship (in all Moto formats) after a half-season defined by injuries and operations makes him stand out alone.

Now, I am a huge Valentino Rossi fan, but he picked up one serious injury in his career when he broke his leg, and from that moment on, he was never the same and he never won another championship.

There’s no disrespect meant to Valentino given all he achieved, but the fact is that Marquez stuck with MotoGP despite years of surgery and anguish, and now is potentially on course for back-to-back titles. It’s unheard of. The man is a machine.

When he came back in 2021, he’d been out of action for a year, and he still managed a MotoGP win. That season, he was essentially riding with one and a half arms, because he’d already had three surgeries and was still in discomfort. He wasn’t fit, he was crashing a lot.

On the Honda, he was probably on the third best bike around, but he kept going. But he turned up at Sachsenring, and won again. Like Leicester City winning that Premier League title, it just shouldn’t be possible.

After that moment in 2021, he still kept riding until the injury forced him under the knife once again. That’s the one where they had to rotate his arm 33 degrees because it was completely twisted. Never mind coming back to racing, that was risking surgery for anyone, but he was all-in.

There was no point half-competing for Marc, he wanted to race to win the title and nothing else. He could win the odd race, but that wasn’t in his mind.

I thought when he won the championship last year, he might take that as the time to stop. He’d done the ultimate. He won the title in 2019, smashed himself to pieces in 2020, and then came back to win in 2025.

It must have been such an abreactional moment to have watched his victory back on the big screen after all his turmoil leading up to it. He’s an unbelievable athlete.

But that 2025 win wasn’t just one season. Its roots were in 2024, when he rode for Ducati’s satellite team, Gresini. He knew he couldn’t beat the factory riders that year, but he persuaded them to give him a chance on the previous year’s bike with Gresini.

He was outstanding, third in the world title and winning races. He forced Ducati’s hand - they couldn’t miss out on signing him.

And once you give Marc the best bike, there’s nobody else that can beat him. He can, with his aggression and determination, to find the limit by overstepping it, but no one else has the minerals or the technique.

I’ve said it before, but he is the greatest motorcycle racer that’s ever been, and we’ll only appreciate that more when he finally retires. Who knows when that will be? He’s on course to challenge for No. 10, even when we’d written him off. Shoulder issues, breaking his foot in Le Mans, missing weekends, and here he is again.

If he does win this year, I don’t think it will be possible to separate 2026 and 2025 in terms of sporting feats. There was no way he was going to win this year after everything he’d suffered, with a loose screw touching his radial nerve, to the extent he could not feel his arm at times. He tried to keep it to himself until he was forced to admit to his team that he needed surgery, and he ended up more than 100 points behind the championship leader. He was done.

But he’s back, and he’s been an absolute animal. He returned earlier than he expected, possibly earlier than advised. As he recovers, he gets some decent results, and then wins the next round. We’re now, somehow, looking at a man who has won three of the last four Grand Prix. He is absurdly superior.

Don’t get me wrong here, but all those challenges, with injuries and the changing of bikes over the last decade, I don’t think Marc wanted to go through that. I’m sure he’d like to be here in 2026 with 13 or 14 world championships, free of the hardships, but I think in some ways it has been the making of him.

All his struggles have served to give him new ways to prove his resilience, develop new skills, and never find the task at hand anything other than a thrill.

I suspect now the motivation might have come full circle. He and Valentino have nine world titles. A 10th, well, that would put fresh air between them.

The two biggest characters of our sport, the two biggest rivals. There is no love lost, even years after Rossi stepped back. It makes no difference to me if they’re friends or not. They are still rivals even after the competition between them is over.

But is it still motivating them both? I suspect so.

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