- Alex Marquez will have surgery in Madrid on Monday to remove the plate from his right collarbone and drain fluid from his right shoulder, which rules him out of the Qatar Grand Prix (per Motorsport.com).
- The Gresini Ducati rider announced the plan after finishing third in Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix, saying painkillers no longer dulled the pain.
- Marquez hopes to return at Portimao in three weeks and to be fit for the December 1 Valencia test, his first ride on KTM’s 2027 prototype.
A Plate, a Swollen Shoulder and Months of Injections
“I can’t do any work at home. I don’t have muscle, I don’t have nothing.” Alex Marquez said that on Sunday at Sepang, in the press conference after he finished third in the Malaysian Grand Prix. He was describing his right shoulder, and what it has become after the Catalan Grand Prix crash.
The man who said it is 30 years old, the 2025 world championship runner-up, and eighth in the standings this year with 197 points after round 19 of 22. He sits 202 points behind his older brother Marc, who leads the standings with 399. On Sunday, Alex told the paddock he will skip next weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix, and the Madrid operation takes its place.
Two Operations in One Trip to Madrid
The surgery is scheduled for Monday in Madrid. Marquez needs the plate taken out of his collarbone, a piece of metal he called quite big. He says the larger problem is the inflammation in the shoulder, so the trip covers two operations in one. Surgeons will try to drain the fluid that has collected there.
“From the moment that I came back after the Catalonia accident, I suffered a lot with my right shoulder,” Marquez said. He has also developed bursitis in the shoulder.
The operation was meant to wait. Marquez had planned it for the end of the season, and on Saturday he said he was considering the options with Dr Samuel Antuna. “It’s not just the plate; there are other things as well,” he said of the options. He also gave his view of how the first operation went: “The impact I suffered in Barcelona was very strong, and the collarbone was operated on very quickly.”
His plan for the next three weeks is rest. “So, as I said, [I will] step back, take time to rest a little bit, and try to make, in a proper way, the final two races of the season,” he said. The target is Portimao, and the doctors have left him some room for hope. “Speaking with the doctors a little bit, that’s possible,” he said.
From the Back of Pedro Acosta’s KTM to the Sepang Podium
The shoulder dates to the Catalan Grand Prix, where Marquez hit the back of Pedro Acosta’s suddenly slowing KTM. He was taken to hospital with a broken right collarbone and a small fracture of the C7 vertebra. Surgeons at Hospital General de Catalunya stabilized the collarbone with a plate on the Sunday night, and Marquez left the hospital the next day. He missed the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello and the Hungarian Grand Prix at Balaton.
Later he explained what happened in his hospital room. He could not remember the crash fully, so he asked to see it. He said he then understood “how lucky I had been to avoid the wall” on the right of the track. He also described the recovery as slow: the impact was so great that a body has to re-land on the ground, he said, and it takes about a week to return somewhat to normal.
At Mandalika he said the shoulder was not much of a problem when he first returned to racing, and that the discomfort grew as the season went on. By Sepang the effort had piled up. Marquez said he has had injections at every race after returning from Barcelona, and that “the truth is that I’ve been having a really difficult time.”
Friday at Sepang showed what that meant. “It’s true that this morning I suffered quite a lot and nothing was what I was expecting,” Marquez said. His team fixed the setup problems by the afternoon, but his body was another matter. “I was expecting to be better on physical side and I’m not feeling so good on the right shoulder,” he said.
He named the places where the pain bites: the change of direction from turn one to turn two and from two to three, turns five and six “a lot”, the fast corners at 12 to 13, and every braking point. He expected short runs and the sprint to be manageable. The Sunday race was a different prospect. “I will be even more tired and painful, it will be hard,” he said. “But I will try my best.”
Saturday brought a different setback. Marquez took pole position for the sprint, built a lead of almost one second, and then fell from the front. Acosta, whose KTM he had hit in the Catalan crash, went on to win the rain-hit sprint. Marquez blamed himself, not the shoulder or the weather. “It was a really small mistake,” he said. “I raced with my heart instead of my head.” He added that the shoulder was fine after the fall and “wasn’t the reason I crashed.”
Sunday gave him the podium. He finished third while his brother Marc, the man Alex thinks is the luckiest in MotoGP, took the win and a first mathematical chance at a tenth world title next weekend. Marc leads Jorge Martin by 44 points, 399 to 355. Alex will not be on the grid for it.
The Qatar Question
The surgery lands at an awkward moment for MotoGP. Riders have pushed back against going to Qatar, which makes the timing of the surgery an obvious question. Marquez has been one of the loudest voices against the trip.
His answer is the calendar itself. Qatar is the third race of a triple header, and he says his body will not take it. “So for me, it’s impossible to do three in a row,” Marquez said. “So, I decided to step back a little bit.”
Then he came back to the painkillers. “I was racing with painkillers and all that, but you know, already now, even that was not enough,” Marquez said. “So, it’s time to do that surgery and try to come back stronger in Portimao and Valencia.”
Injections at every race, painkillers on top, and a third weekend in a row: that is the case he makes.
The Price of the Show
At the Australian Grand Prix weekend, six of the 22 full time riders were declared unfit to race, four of them through injury. Marquez used that weekend to talk about the damage the format does. Pedro Acosta has made a similar case that the format will shorten riders’ careers, and Marquez spoke as a man who has paid the price.
“What they are asking the riders to do on track is a little bit too much,” he said. “Every time we are [going] faster and faster, every time the quantity of laps that you are pushing on the limit is bigger,” he added, and “more [of a] show is also more risks.”
He pointed to the sprint. “The time they introduced the sprint, the injuries increased,” Marquez said. “I’m 30. I will not be affected. I will retire one year later or earlier.” He turned to the next generation: “the young people like Fermin [Aldeguer] and [Pedro] Acosta are who the championship really needs to take care about”.
Asked how many sprints a season should have, he said half the current number. “The perfect would be like six, like Formula 1 [in 2026], more or less,” he said. MotoGP introduced the sprint format in 2023, with a half distance race at every round. Aldeguer, whose season ended where it began, is one of the riders he had in mind.
“They need to think about creating heroes but heroes in the long term, not just in a short time,” Marquez said.
The Road Back Runs Through Valencia
Marquez switches to the factory KTM team next season, and his priority is a full recovery for the final two races and, above all, the December 1 test at Valencia. That day he gets his first chance to ride KTM’s 850cc prototype under the 2027 regulations.
That gives the Madrid operation a second purpose. Portimao comes in three weeks, and the doctors’ verdict decides whether he races there. Valencia follows as the season finale. Then comes the test, with a new bike and a clean start.
Alex Marquez has spent the year in the shadow of his brother’s title chase and then in the shadow of an injury. A rider who has raced for months on injections and painkillers can stop for a few weeks. He wants to come back stronger, and the first test of that is the Portuguese Grand Prix.
