For 19 minutes and 39 seconds, we got a glimpse at MotoGP’s future.
And it was a future that looked pretty damned good.
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Across 13 laps of the season-opening sprint race in Thailand in February, Spaniards Marc Marquez and Pedro Acosta scrapped in a head-to-head brawl with the ferocity of a last-chance championship decider, Acosta sending bold block-pass overtakes on Marquez at the final corner of the track, Marquez repeatedly and immediately repassing his younger compatriot with increasing aggression.
It was a race decided on a technicality – Marquez was ordered by race stewards to give first place back to Acosta after his Ducati barged past the KTM at the final corner on the penultimate lap – and one decided by a touch over one-tenth of a second.
And one both riders relished.
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“It was a borderline move,” Marquez admitted.
“Could it be penalised? Yes, or maybe not. The one who gets the penalty will always say no, the other rider might say yes. I’m still proud of how the race was.”
Acosta grinned.
“Super happy to start a season battling with Marc like that,” he said.
“It’s true that I would like to have finished first battling for it, not with Marc letting me past … this is what makes MotoGP exciting for the fans. For this, it was a good overtake.”
A little under four months later, one of MotoGP worst-kept secrets was confirmed when Ducati’s factory team announced it would pair 33-year-old Marquez with Acosta, 11 years his junior and described for years as ‘the next Marquez’ after similarly blazing his way through Moto3 and Moto2 before coming to MotoGP in 2024, for the next two seasons.
It’s a partnership of a rider who has won more premier-class Grands Prix than all but one rider in MotoGP history with one of, remarkably, just four riders on the current grid without a single victory, given Acosta’s Thailand sprint success doesn’t count as a Grand Prix ‘win’ in the sport’s record books.
On paper, the numbers make it look like a colossal mismatch, one where Acosta will suffer a similar fate to most of Marquez’s teammates over the seven-time MotoGP champion’s 14-season career.
On track? There’s no telling how it’ll go, but Acosta can’t wait to find out.
“I’m very grateful to Ducati for allowing me to be part of their project, even though I haven’t won a MotoGP race yet,” Acosta told motorsport.com last week.
“I have no idea what awaits me in that garage, but I don’t feel any pressure. Marc is in the final phase of his career. I’m starting mine.”
‘UNDER NO PRESSURE’: ACOSTA ON BECOMING MARQUEZ’S TEAMMATE
Sometimes, actions really do speak louder than words.
Acosta’s comments, on their face, could be interpreted as throwing shade at Marquez’s age and battered body, which has undergone one right shoulder surgery after another before finally reclaiming in 2025 what was his apparent birthright for years, Marquez winning his first six MotoGP titles in the opening seven seasons of his career.
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But their race in Thailand, which was unforgiving, brutally hard and tiptoeing right to the edge of acceptable aggression without crossing it, is what makes MotoGP fans so eager to see how 2027 – the first year of the 850cc regulation reset that represents the sport’s biggest change since 2012, the year before Marquez’s debut – pans out.
The possibility of Marquez and Acosta in the same garage captivated the sport’s watchers for years, but it seemed unlikely when Acosta’s premier-class debut in 2024 for KTM coincided with Marquez’s first year away from Honda with satellite Ducati team Gresini, Marquez exiting a highly-paid deal with Honda to effectively ride for free as he sought answers to the question of whether his body or his machinery was the reason for his title drought since his injury-wrecked 2020 season.
Marquez won races on a second-hand, second-year bike in 2024, leveraged that into a full factory seat with Ducati for 2025, and then annihilated the opposition to win last year’s title with five rounds left, and make former Ducati golden boy Francesco Bagnaia appear surplus to needs.
Acosta? He took poles and podiums early in his KTM tenure. He destroyed whoever was on the sister bike in the same garage, and is still yet to be outqualified by a teammate after 53 MotoGP starts.
And – still, as KTM got left behind by Ducati first, then Aprilia more recently – he hasn’t won a Grand Prix. Only 2026 rookies Toprak Razgatlioglu and Diogo Moreira, plus Honda’s Luca Marini, share that same unwanted fate.
For two riders who similarly bludgeoned their way through the world championship’s feeder classes – Marquez won two titles across five seasons in the 125cc (now Moto3) category before Moto2, and 26 pre-MotoGP class races while Acosta won two crowns in three years and 16 races – their stories have taken wildly divergent paths in the top flight, and a decade apart.
But Acosta’s star hasn’t waned.
This year alone, he’s scored 163 points to sit seventh in the standings with three Grand Prix podiums, a pole and that Thailand win among three sprint podiums; his fellow Grand Prix-winning KTM stablemates (teammate Brad Binder, and Tech3 pair Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales) have scored 158 points combined.
The KTM is a clear third-best bike on its best days, but Acosta sits in front of three Ducati riders (Bagnaia, Alex Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer) in the standings, too.
It’s why he’s so fascinated as to what lies ahead.
“I’m not someone who reads too much about myself, and I have people around me who are very honest and tell me things to my face,” he said.
“Those expectations have been there from day one; in Moto3 they were already comparing me with Marc. I think I made a huge step in maturity from Moto2 to MotoGP.
“Marc knows everyone at the factory, I’ll need time to adapt to an all-Italian garage after spending six years with KTM. I’m facing a completely new chapter, so I’m under no pressure.
“Luckily I will stay there for at least two years. This will give me time to get into the rhythm in the first year, and see what happens in the second.”
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THE TALL TASK FACING ACOSTA
What has happened to Marquez’s teammates over the years?
A lot, most of it able to be visually represented by a chalk outline.
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Marquez debuted at Repsol Honda in 2013 alongside Dani Pedrosa, who had won 22 Grands Prix in seven years and finished runner-up in the championship three times when his rookie compatriot took over the seat vacated by retiring Australian Casey Stoner.
Marquez won the second race of his MotoGP career by beating Pedrosa in a head-to-head fight in Texas, won six times to Pedrosa’s three across the season, and became the youngest-ever premier-class world champion as a 20-year-old debutant by the end of it.
No teammate has got closer since.
Marquez vs teammates, MotoGP career (2013-26)
Repsol Honda (2013-23)
Teammates: Dani Pedrosa (2013-18), Jorge Lorenzo (2019), Alex Marquez (2020), Pol Espargaro (2021-22), Joan Mir (2023)
Marquez: 59 wins, 64 poles, 101 podiums, six world championships
Pedrosa/Lorenzo/Marquez/Espargaro/Mir: 7 wins, 8 poles, 45 podiums
Gresini Ducati (2024)
Teammate: Alex Marquez
Marc Marquez: 3 wins, 2 poles, 10 podiums
Alex Marquez: 0 wins, 0 poles, 1 podium
Ducati factory team (2025-26*)
Teammate: Francesco Bagnaia
Marquez: 14 wins, 11 poles, 18 podiums, one world championship
Bagnaia: 2 wins, 4 poles, 12 podiums
Overall:
Marquez: 76 wins, 77 poles, 129 podiums, seven world championships
Teammates: 9 wins, 12 poles, 58 podiums
(* – season in progress)
It’s this lion’s den that Acosta has signed up for, but one both he – and the sport – arguably need. And one that poses myriad questions.
How much does Marquez has left, and – given his injury history – is he likely to be in the sport for a good time rather than a long one, eschewing a slow decline as he approaches his 40s like his old sparring partner Valentino Rossi?
How good is Acosta, really? Will Marquez’s reputation for pulverising opponents with on-track pace and masterful mind games work on a rider who appears to be the sequel to the original? Is there a time where the arcs of two riders born in different generations bisect, and what happens then?
It’ll take a lot longer than 19 minutes and 39 seconds to find out, much as Thailand this year whetted the appetite. It’ll be compelling, whatever happens. And it’s a storyline – of all of the many changes to MotoGP set for 2027 – that arguably trumps every other.
Count Acosta as among those intrigued.
“I have a lot of questions about how it will go,” he said.
“I’m not someone who normally points the finger at other people to make it clear that something isn’t my fault. Maybe next year that will happen, there won’t be any excuses. If things don’t go well, it will be my fault. That makes me very happy.
“I’m a very direct guy, even with myself … this will only bring positive things to my career.”
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