10/23/2026
'I prefer not to give my opinion at the moment,' Marc Marquez said when asked about racing in Qatar this November.
The reigning world champion's silence lands as the Qatar Grand Prix, scheduled for November 6-8, stays on the calendar despite Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabian infrastructure and a regional security situation that keeps getting worse.
Dorna already postponed this event once, moving it out of its April slot after an earlier escalation in the conflict.
Jorge Martin leads Marquez by just 2 points in the championship standings, and a cancelled or disrupted race in Qatar could reshape the title fight in its final stretch.
Martin himself downplayed the stakes publicly.
'Nobody has said we're not going. It's just another race. If we go, great; if not, that's fine too. If the organisers decide we can go, it'll be because our safety is guaranteed,' Jorge Martin said.
Alex Marquez, Marc's brother, offered a more pointed assessment of the situation on the ground.
'The situation changes every day and it looks worse every day, that's just how it is,' Alex Marquez said.
'The championship tells us that everything is under control, but I think nobody has a situation like that under control; it's quite complex,' Alex Marquez added.
Pedro Acosta echoed the same conditional trust in race organizers that Martin expressed.
'If we go, it's because it's more or less guaranteed that the situation is safe,' Pedro Acosta said.
Pecco Bagnaia pointed directly at Dorna's responsibility to protect the grid.
'I believe the common interest is to ensure total safety, and that's Dorna's main goal. If that's not the case, I'm sure they won't want to take any risks,' Pecco Bagnaia said.
Behind closed doors, a large number of riders are reported to be wary of the trip, though none besides Alex Marquez has said so on record.
Every rider quoted frames the decision as Dorna's to make, not theirs, while the race stays officially on the books.
November 6 approaches with no public change to the schedule and no rider willing to call for one by name.
