The 22-point MotoGP world championship lead Marc Marquez holds going into this weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone still undersells his level of dominance in this year's title fight.
Across the 12 sprints and GPs so far, last weekend’s French GP was the first race this season that Marquez has genuinely lost rather than 'gave away'.
And yet his first genuine on-merit defeat of the year - to LCR Honda’s shock winner Johann Zarco - also brought a 20-point swing in the championship against both of his main title rivals.
It might well be one swing in his favour too many, because this has felt like a title fight in which every chaotic race has to go against Marquez for his rivals to stand any chance.
Marquez's Le Mans approach
Marquez raced in France with a keen awareness of both the championship picture and his particular crash from the Spanish Grand Prix a fortnight earlier.
"I need to have this extra caution with the new tyres," he acknowledged early in the Le Mans weekend.
"I feel super confident, I feel smooth, I feel like I cannot crash."
His comments have been reminiscent of Pecco Bagnaia's suggestion that the Ducati is so good that it's paradoxically easier to crash with no warning - but Marquez clearly knew at Le Mans that he had enough margin to play it really safe.
He allowed poleman Fabio Quartararo to establish a considerable lead in the sprint, seemingly very aware that he just needed to weather those first couple of laps before the race would come back to him. Which, of course, it did.
"When I pushed full gas on the practice, I was [1m]30.7-30.8[s]. Today I was 31.0-31.1," he ominously remarked after the sprint.
Truthfully, the Le Mans weekend looked like it should be a Marquez 37-pointer from the very first session, weather-permitting. But when the weather didn't permit it on Sunday, Marquez prioritised outscoring his brother Alex.
"It was the kind of day that you need to minimise the damage. In those conditions it's super easy to do a small mistake.
"I was just trying to control Alex - he's my brother but he's the main opponent for the championship at the moment.
"At one point when I went out on the wets, I pushed, I saw that I was closing to Johann - but eight seconds were too much. Riding in that [1m]45s was too much risk.
"The fact that I made a mistake at Jerez avoided a mistake today. If I'd come with a victory at Jerez, I'm not 100% sure but 80% sure I would've crashed today. I know myself."
Consistently ahead
Marquez has been the top Ducati qualifier in every qualifying and the top Ducati finisher in every race he's finished.
His crashes at COTA and Jerez have opened the door to challengers, but both Alex Marquez and Bagnaia have lost to Marc in every straight fight so far.
And at Le Mans both took massive points hits. Bagnaia could've well won the French GP, having nailed the decision to start on wets but getting effectively removed from the race by former team-mate Enea Bastianini at the Dunlop chicane, while Alex crashed once from the podium, then a second time from a top-six finish.
The points picture is still kinder to them than the true balance of power in races so far. If we take all 12 races so far and approximate where each rider would've finished had all three of them reached the chequered flag, we get a very different points outcome.
Real standings
1. M Marquez - 171
2. A Marquez - 149 (-22)
3. Bagnaia - 120 (-51)
Theoretical standings
1. M Marquez - 213
2. A Marquez - 154 (-59)
3. Bagnaia - 144 (-69)
You can and probably should quibble with some aspects of this - for example, I pencilled in a Le Mans win for Bagnaia and a Jerez win for Marc, but I also didn't try to account for the points damage done by Bagnaia's qualifying crash in Qatar or Alex's mistakes in the Sunday race that same weekend.
But this is an imprecise exercise, and what it definitely isn't is a suggestion of what 'fairer' standings would've looked like. 'Fair' doesn't come into it - it's just useful for projection, and that projection is bleak for the other title contenders.
"Those mistakes we have to control," Alex said of his second crash in the French GP. "Those 5-10 points would be really helpful for the championship."
Bagnaia, when asked by The Race whether he was now worried by the 51-point gap to Marc, said: "Every time we are a bit closer, because I’m never over two tenths [behind] in terms of pace. But we are always speaking about tenths, about milliseconds, and right now my confidence on the bike is not there and it’s not allowing me to push like I want."
Both will have realised by now - and Marc probably has, too - that on current form the championship leader doesn't just come to every track with a chance to win, but comes to every track as the favourite to win.
Even Silverstone, a track where both Alex and Bagnaia have historically excelled more relative to their baseline than Marc, is an opportunity to stretch out the points lead.
"I expect that Alex will be super fast there, normally for his riding style it will be better than here. Let's see if we can be close to the top guys, that is the target," said Marc.
"If he says that, you know... also we saw with him lying in Qatar," laughed Alex. "If he wants to put some pressure on me, it won't be like this! I know him.
"Last year with the 2023 bike he was able to be in front of me.
"It's normally one track that I enjoy a lot, really fast, really flowing. Performance-wise, always we are more or less the same, it's not that I'm better than him.
"Maybe it's a track that for my riding style is slightly better. But you know... it's Marc Marquez. It's not another [rider] who doesn't know how to be fast on some track."
It's Marc Marquez. For that reason, though the points buffer isn't there to say it with any confidence, we may have already seen the last lead change of the 2025 MotoGP title fight.
