Perhaps Nicky Hayden’s most famous quote on MotoGP racing is, “that’s why we line up on Sunday, you never know what’s going to happen”. And while the spirit of Hayden’s quote persists, there are some weekends where it is quoted more in hope than in expectation. This weekend, the return of MotoGP at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, is just such an occasion.
It seems fairly obvious that a Ducati is going to win this weekend. After all, a Ducati has won all but two of the eleven races held at the circuit since we first returned here in 2016. That was once in 2020, when Miguel Oliveira won the restarted race caused by Maverick Viñales overheating his brakes and destroying the air fence at Turn 1, and again in 2021, when Brad Binder stayed out in a downpour on slicks and slithered his way to victory. So it has been KTM denying Ducati a clean sweep.
It also seems fairly obvious that Marc Marquez is going to win. For a lot of reasons. Spielberg is one of just a handful of circuits where Márquez has not yet won, though he ran Andrea Dovizioso very close a couple of times when the Ducati was clearly superior. Márquez now has the tool to finish the job, in the shape of the Ducati Desmosedici GP25, or what passes for one. And he is utterly dominating the 2025 MotoGP season.
Why is the Ducati a shoe-in for victory at the Red Bull Ring? If you had to design a track specifically to suit the Ducati, it would probably look like this. Lots of fast straights, lots of hard acceleration from slow corners, lots of hard braking mostly in a straight line, and not much in the way of flowing corners.
It starts with the front straight, entered at speed from the final corner, and where acceleration and braking is everything. The first turn is always chaos, the bikes heading uphill then being funneled back on themselves through the slow first corner, riders colliding and running wide. After the first lap, Turn 1 is a test of brakes, as the riders throw out the anchors to scrub off over 200 km/h. That is helped some by the first corner being steep uphill, but it also means the front suspension is hard on the stops.
So hard on the brakes is Turn 1 at the Red Bull Ring that Brembo has had to keep bringing new technology. Bigger discs – either 340mm or 355mm are mandatory, but most riders will use the 355s in Austria – and finned calipers to help dissipate the heat absorbed by the braking fluid and keep the seals working. Maverick Viñales’ crash at Turn 1 in 2020, when the brakes on his Yamaha M1 failed and he was forced to jump off the bike before it speared itself into the air fence, was a visceral reminder of just how far MotoGP pushes braking technology.
If you have safely negotiated Turn 1, you shift up a couple of gears before hitting the brakes again for the chicane of Turns 2a and 2b. The chicane replaced probably the best corner on the track, the fast and physical left where riders where leaned over full left while desperately trying to drag the bike right ready for Turn 3. But the glory of the former Turn 2 was also its peril, as we saw in the second Austrian race in 2020, when Franco Morbidelli clipped Johann Zarco on the entry to Turn 2, and they ended up heading into the gravel, their bikes catapulted across the track at the exit of Turn 3, almost skimming the heads of Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales.
Out of the chicane, it is a short run to the now much safer right of Turn 3, another tight and slow corner leading onto a straight. From Turns 3 to Turn 4, the track snakes along the hillside, with an impressive view of the paddock and grandstands below. The riders have no time for that, preparing to slam on the brakes once again, and drop over 220 km/h this time. It is a tricky corner too, braking on a crest and then starting to dip down as the track turns hard right. If there is a place you can wash out the front, it is here, or at the long right of Turn 5 that follows.
Middle eight
Turn 5 is the start of the long corners that comprise the middle section of the track. Turn 5 is a long right, then you flick the bike left and start to plunged down the hill through Turn 6, before coming back on yourself through Turn 7. A quick flick right again through Turn 8, and then the riders head into last chance territory, and the scene of some remarkable finishes through the years.
Ideally, you want to get the run on a rider ahead through the right at Turn 9, then sweep underneath them through Turn 10. But the rider ahead of you knows this, and is preemptively trying to take your line away. So you can try to go early, dive underneath as the track dips down toward the front straight, then hope your rival can’t come back at the final corner. And all the while, as the downhill rush pushes you out to the edge of the track, you have to be careful not to run wide. More than one heart has been broken in Austria after having to give up a place due to exceeding track limits.
The first four races at the Red Bull Ring turned into thrillers. (Technically, grand prix motorcycling raced at Spielberg, then called the A1 Ring, twice before, in 1996 and 1997, but that was a very different layout.) Andrea Iannone just beat his then factory Ducati teammate Andrea Dovizioso in the first outing in 2016 after choosing the right tire.
In the following three editions, Marc Márquez kept coming up just short on the Repsol Honda, losing to Andrea Dovizioso in 2017 and 2019, and Jorge Lorenzo in 2018. His combined gap to the win over all three races totals just 0.519, if you were wondering just how close it was. But as the Ducati got better and after Marc Márquez broke his arm in 2020 and lost four years of his career to injury and the precipitous drop in form of the Honda, the racing got more spread out, with only poor weather bringing any entertainment.
Time drags
Last year’s race was something of a nadir, in entertainment terms. Pecco Bagnaia, riding at the top of his form, and at a track that he loves and where he won in 2022 and 2023, put on a show of such dominance and perfection that it made the eyes of fans seeking excitement glaze over. He was brilliant, he was untouchable, and the whole thing was barely watchable.
That is causing issues for the promoter as well. Especially in the light of the 2025 MotoGP calendar. Austria gets much of its crowd from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, as it is the nearest round to a region like the Balkans, which is genuinely mad about motorcycle racing, or to Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and points east.
This year, though, sees the return of Brno, and the arrival of the Balaton Park circuit in Hungary. Both circuits which are massively popular with the same audience. And where usually, the accommodation is both cheaper and much closer to the track. Austria finds itself in the second half of the Sachsenring-Brno-Spielberg-Balaton Park mid-season grouping, all of which are fishing from the same pool of fans, to a greater or lesser extent. Fans have a reason to go elsewhere. And processional racing isn’t helping the Red Bull Ring change their minds.
Pencil his name on the trophy
So, who is going to win at the Red Bull Ring, and why will it be Marc Márquez? For all of the reasons listed above. The championship leader is on a roll, arguably in the best form of his life, aided by being on the best MotoGP bike he’s ever ridden, with the possible exception of the 2013 Honda RC213V. He comes to a track where he very nearly managed to beat the Ducatis on a clearly inferior bike, but this time he is on a Ducati. And he has never won here, and has something to set right. It is hard to see anyone making a dent in that.
Normally, you might tip his brother Alex, as the Gresini Ducati rider is having an exceptional year and has been very good pretty much everywhere. He is hampered by having a Long Lap penalty, a holdover from his crash at Brno, which is going to make taking the fight to Marc extremely difficult. So Alex Márquez’ objective for Austria will be to gain as many points as possible in the Saturday sprint race, then limit his losses on Sunday.
The most intriguing prospect is Pecco Bagnaia. Bagnaia, like pretty much everyone else, will be running the big 355mm front discs, at a track where the braking demands it. The big discs are not the solution to his woes with the 2025 Ducati, but they provide something of a workaround, giving him the feedback to control the front locking as he brakes on corner entry. There seem to be many pieces to the puzzle, especially as the GP25 is not so very different to the GP24 which fitted Bagnaia like a glove.
This is one of Pecco Bagnaia’s best tracks, and he should be able to have all of his ducks in a row, all of his bike sensation planets aligned. The longer his struggles continue, the easier it is to believe that the biggest problem with the GP25 is the nut between the handlebars.
Champion’s territory?
Similarly intriguing is what Jorge Martin can do. It is the track where he got his first win, taking victory from pole as a rookie in 2021, and a place where he has been on the podium four more times, in both GPs and sprints. He returns to Austria after the summer break to perhaps his first ‘normal’ GP. The return at Qatar was fraught with problems, and his appearance at Brno gave him still a lot of catching up to do.
In Austria, though, Martin knows what he is in for, and has an idea of what to expect. He has a better understanding of the Aprilia RS-GP, and has had more time to train to try to build up some of the strength that can only really be gained from riding a MotoGP bike. It is perhaps the first chance MotoGP fans will get to see what Martin can do with the number 1 plate on the Aprilia.
Then there’s his teammate, Marco Bezzecchi. The Italian has taken advantage of the improvements Aprilia have made to the RS-GP to post some impressive results. He had a podium here in 2023 on a Ducati that suited him, and he seems to have reached the point with the Aprilia as well. Bezzecchi could quite easily cause real problems for the Ducatis in Austria.
Home heroes, hopefully
If ever there was a moment for the KTMs to shine, it is this weekend at the Red Bull Ring. After KTM’s much publicized financial struggles and near bankruptcy, they have a lot to put right in front of their home crowd. They have form here too, as the only other manufacturer to have taken a win here since 2016, bringing Ducati’s monopoly on the top step at Spielberg to a halt.
The track should suit the KTM RC16 as well. The KTM is strong in hard braking, of which there is plenty. The question mark is how well the KTMs can manage the low grip at the Red Bull Ring, which causes the rear to spin and overheat, and has prompted Michelin to bring their special heat resistant casing.
For Pedro Acosta, the aim has to be to reassert himself as the top KTM rider. The Red Bull Factory Racing rider has been much discombobulated by the attention paid to Maverick Viñales’ performance on the Tech3 bike, and has taken to pointing out at every opportunity that it is in fact he, Pedro Acosta, who is the best KTM rider at the moment, four places and 55 points ahead of the upstart at Tech3. Now that he has laid aside any thought of an escape to Ducati for next season, he is turning his attention to getting the most out of his current situation.
Both Viñales and Acosta’s Red Bull Factory KTM teammate Brad Binder have had some success here at Spielberg, though Viñales’ record is also fraught with disaster and frustration. Binder has a victory here in dismal conditions, staying with slicks during a downpour, and just about getting away with it to take the win.
Plugging away
For Yamaha and Honda, the song remains the same. Trying to find improvements from rear grip from otherwise quite good bikes. It would not be outlandish to expect Fabio Quartararo to stick it on pole again, as he has done four times already this year. But the problem for the Frenchman is that while the Monster Energy Yamaha M1 is fast over a single lap, once the flag drops, he goes backwards. That is the elephant in the room that Quartararo is pinning his hopes on the V4 addressing.
Honda will have a meaningful upgrade in Austria, something already tested at a private test in Brno. Luca Marini hinted that it would be clearly visible, which suggests either aero or a swingarm or frame. But still, the rear grip is what is missing, and that is what needs to be fixed. No doubt Johann Zarco will continue to be the best Honda rider, and get the absolute most out of the package. But there is still some way to go until we get to the point where a Honda can challenge the Ducatis at Austria again. And this time, they don’t have Marc Márquez.
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