Winning ten MotoGP races in an entire career is a major achievement. Marc Márquez won ten in a row to begin the 2014 season—and he did it at just 21 years old, during only his second year in motorcycle racing’s premier class.
Márquez had already shocked the sport by becoming MotoGP world champion as a rookie in 2013. Instead of suffering a difficult second season, he became even more dominant. According to MotoGP’s official account of his career, the Spanish rider won every one of the opening ten rounds of 2014, from the night race in Qatar through the Indianapolis Grand Prix.
Ten starts, ten victories
The streak crossed continents, climates and circuit types. Márquez won under Qatar’s floodlights, at the fast and flowing Mugello and Catalunya tracks, on the stop-start Sachsenring, and finally at Indianapolis. A different challenge arrived almost every weekend, yet the result at the front never changed.
His tenth win came in the United States on August 10. The official MotoGP milestone record identifies Indianapolis 2014 as the race where Márquez completed his run of ten consecutive victories. By that point, he had taken the maximum possible number of race wins during the season’s entire first half.
The sequence was remarkable not only for its length but also for its timing. Márquez entered 2014 as the defending champion, so every rival knew he was the rider to beat. He still converted ten straight race weekends into victories despite the pressure, changing conditions and the tiny margins that separate success from a crash in MotoGP.
Pedrosa finally stopped the streak
The perfect run ended at the eleventh round in Brno. Márquez’s teammate Dani Pedrosa won the Czech Grand Prix, while Márquez finished fourth. The FIM’s champion profile records both the ten opening victories and Pedrosa’s role in bringing the sequence to an end.
One defeat did not slow Márquez for long. He returned to the top step at Silverstone and later secured his second consecutive MotoGP championship at Motegi in Japan. By the end of the 18-round season, he had collected 13 victories.
A premier-class record
Those 13 wins established a new record for victories in a single premier-class season, surpassing the 12 races Mick Doohan won in 1997. MotoGP’s record-breaking retrospective highlights both achievements: 13 wins across 2014 and ten consecutive victories at the start.
Later riders and longer calendars have changed many statistics, but the opening of Márquez’s 2014 campaign remains startlingly simple: the championship held ten races, and the same 21-year-old rider won all ten.
Sources and further reading
- MotoGP — Márquez’s eleven years with Honda
- FIM — Marc Márquez: the story of a champion
- MotoGP — Márquez the record breaker
