Márquez "continues to focus on his recovery and preparing for the preseason"

January 10, 2022

Little or nothing is known about the true state of Marc Márquez’s health, slowly recovering from an eye injury since he suffered a blow to the head while training on an offroad motorcycle on October 30.

The eight-time world champion was unable to take part in the last two grand prix of last year, Portugal and Valencia , and there is still uncertainty as to whether he will be able to face the preseason, which starts on February 5 and 6 at the circuit of Sepang.

Honda called a press conference on Monday in which the Japanese factory riders will take part: Pol Espargaró, from the Repsol Honda team, and Alex Márquez and Takaaki Nakagami, from LCR.

The meeting will be an update with the drivers after the winter break while waiting for the official presentation of the team, still without a date, and the one who will not be available to the media is Marc Márquez , who “continues to focus on his recovery and preparing for the preseason,” reported Honda.

There are only 25 days left before the start of the training sessions prior to the 2022 academic year with the double day in Sepang, and the team trusts that Márquez can be present in all or part of the tests, which will extend to a second round of tests of the February 11 to 13 in Mandalika, the scene of what will be the new Indonesian Grand Prix, which makes its debut on the MotoGP calendar and is scheduled for March 20, as the second event of the course.

Márquez has already missed the 2021 pre-season tests due to the injury to his right arm, and was also unable to be in the Jerez tests last November due to his eye injury, putting Honda in difficulties in the development of its prototype.

At HRC, however, they ended up satisfied with the work done by Espargaró, Nakagami and Alex Márquez in Jerez, and expect Marc to reappear, albeit in the second test, Mandalika , to finish tuning the 2022 RC213V, a completely new motorcycle that will replace the critical previous prototype, which with the freezing of engines derived from the pandemic has not been able to be improved during the past two seasons.

Pol Espargaro, Repsol Honda Team