Most pole positions in one season

For every pole position in MotoGP, there is a Tissot watch. And exactly ten years ago, one man collected a whole lot of them. We look back.

Tobias Mühlbauer18.07.2024, 11:21 a.m.

Tobias Mühlbauer

Formula 1 & Motorcycle Department

MotoGP and Formula 1, that’s my thing. I turned my passion into my job at MSM and have been there for you ever since when engines roar.MORE

Marc Marquez set a record in 2014, Photo: Repsol Honda

Pole position: the place where every racing driver wants to be. This is also the case in the MotoGP. And even though overtaking is still easier on two wheels than on four wheels, it is of course easiest to win from the very front. That is why, in the MotoGP Contemporary History series, we set out to find out who has secured the coveted place at the very front of the starting grid most often in a season.

Marc Marquez collects watches endlessly

Tissot, the ‘Official Timekeeper of MotoGP’, always gives a wristwatch as a prize to the fastest man in qualifying for reaching pole position. And there is one driver who, exactly ten years ago, collected so many of these watches that they certainly didn’t all fit on his wrist.

We are of course talking about Marc Marquez. In his second MotoGP season in 2014, the then Honda rider achieved the fastest time in qualifying an incredible 13 times. The Spaniard thus surpassed two Australian motorcycle legends. Mick Doohan and Casey Stoner each achieved 12 pole positions in the 1997 and 2011 seasons respectively.

Pole quota: Doohan overtakes Marquez

Now, some readers will rightly point out that in the early years of the motorcycle world championship there were years that had fewer than 13 Grand Prix. Accordingly, the legends of that time were never able to reach Marquez’s level. So, to be fair, let’s also look at the best pole position rate in a season.

Mick Doohan dominated the qualifying in 1997, Photo: Milagro

However, we can see that Marquez is way ahead in this regard too. None of the riders from the first decades of the motorcycle world championship can beat his rate of 72% (13 out of 18) from the 2014 season. But one rider we have already mentioned can do it. Mick Doohan secured a rate of an incredible 80% (12 out of 15) in the 1997 qualifying sessions. We should also mention that he set another record for eternity in the process, because he took all of his 12 pole positions this year in a row! So the absolute record is held by Marc Marquez, but Doohan’s performance is at least as impressive.