Marc Marquez won both MotoGP races at the Sachsenring. Almost nobody else moved.
The German Grand Prix produced one of the most static weekends of the season — the leading riders lined up on Saturday and Sunday and largely stayed where they were — and in the paddock the finger-pointing began immediately. The riders agree the racing was poor. They cannot agree on why.
For Alex Marquez, the culprit is a rule change introduced for safety only days earlier. MotoGP widened the gaps on the grid from three metres to four following the Catalan Grand Prix crash, and the Gresini rider says it killed the launch off the line. "My idea was to attack him on the start, but now with the new rules that we have more space between riders and more space between lines, it's quite difficult to gain position," he said. "If the other one didn't make a big mistake, it's so impossible to arrive even in parallel."
Fabio Di Giannantonio, third in the sprint, blamed the circuit and its effect on tyres. Follow another bike closely at the Sachsenring, the VR46 rider explained, and the front tyre overheats within a lap. "We know that this track is really, really difficult to overtake on. Once you go just behind another rider, the front tyre gets temperature, and with all the corners being in the angle, it's really difficult to keep the pace and then try to overtake." Even with better pace than the two Marquez brothers ahead of him, he said, "it was just too risky to overtake Alex." Following another rider, he added, "gets really a nightmare to just keep the pace."
Pedro Acosta, who finished the sprint eighth without ever threatening a position, went after the format itself. He wants shorter sprints. "15 laps is a lot for a Sprint," the Red Bull KTM rider said. "Maybe you can make it until lap 10, more or less. Because from first to eighth place, I was there, was only around 3 seconds [until lap 10]. This can be a nice show." His logic is simple: cut the distance, keep the pack bunched, and force the moves that a full-length sprint lets spread out.
The bluntest verdict came from Cal Crutchlow. The former grand prix winner, now a MotoGP test rider, aimed at the minimum front tyre-pressure rule introduced in 2023 on Michelin's safety advice — the same rule that forces riders to keep pushing to hold temperature in the front tyre. "The rules are a joke," he said. "And that's why we can't race, and we can't pass." His fix is deregulation: "Let us do what we want to do. We already race motorcycles anyway."
Four riders, four different diagnoses — grid spacing, track and tyre temperature, sprint length, and the tyre-pressure limits — but a shared conclusion that MotoGP has engineered close racing out of its own product. The uncomfortable common thread is that most of the causes are self-inflicted, brought in the name of safety. With Marquez pulling clear at the front, the summer break gives the championship's rule-makers time to decide whether a procession is a price worth paying.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/motogps-overtaking-crisis-laid-bare-by-sachsenring-procession). Visit for full coverage.*