Marc Marquez sweeps Misano to share MotoGP lead
NXTbets Pro | Published On: September 13, 2026
Marc Marquez takes lead
Marc Marquez left Misano with the kind of weekend riders chase all season. He won the San Marino Grand Prix, completed a sprint-and-race double at the circuit and moved into the lead of the 2026 MotoGP championship for the first time this season. Marquez was level on 274 points with Jorge Martin, but he went top on countback because he had five wins to Martin’s one. The victory also pushed him to five Grand Prix wins in the season and 78 premier-class victories overall, a total that underlined how quickly he had stacked results at the front of the championship fight. Misano gave him another clean answer to the riders around him, and the numbers from the round backed that up. He added the race win to his sprint success and turned one stop on the calendar into a decisive points swing. With the lead now in his hands, Marquez moved on with the title race shaped by wins, not just totals, and with the margin defined by the way he had finished races when it had mattered most.
Misano race order
The San Marino Grand Prix still had plenty of movement behind Marquez. Marco Bezzecchi started from pole position and led early, but he crashed out of the lead on the opening lap and lost the chance to convert his front-row start into a home victory. That opened the door for a race that kept changing shape in the top five. Jorge Martin briefly went to the front after passing Marquez, then faded to fifth by the finish. Alex Marquez worked his way to second after starting ninth on the grid, which marked a recovery from his starting position. Pedro Acosta finished third and Fermin Aldeguer took fourth, giving the podium chase a mix of established contenders and younger pace. The order behind the winner showed how quickly the race flipped after the opening sequence, when Bezzecchi’s crash removed the pole sitter and Martin’s short spell in the lead gave way to the final order. Marquez stayed ahead of the group that kept fighting for position and made the most of the mistakes around him. The final classification reflected both pace and execution, with the front-runners forced to recover from different kinds of setbacks while Marquez turned a winning ride into a championship move.
Ducati and the sprint
The Misano round also carried weight beyond the rider standings. Ducati moved two points clear of Aprilia in the constructors’ standings after the round, a small margin that still mattered in a season where every result pushed the table in one direction or another. The sprint race helped shape that picture too. Marquez won the shorter race after taking the lead from Bezzecchi at Turn 1, and that result gave him his sixth Sprint victory of the 2026 season. Bezzecchi finished second in the sprint and Martin was third, but both Bezzecchi and Francesco Bagnaia failed to score after crashing. That left Ducati two points clear of Aprilia in the constructors’ standings. Marquez’s sweep stood out because it came across both formats, and the sprint win set the tone for the Grand Prix that followed. The combination of the two results gave him the full points profile a title leader wanted, while Ducati banked enough across the round to edge ahead in the team battle. Misano ended with Marquez on top of the rider standings, Ducati ahead in the constructors’ race and a championship picture that tightened around the winners while punishing the riders who left points on the table.
