The Spaniard waited until the last minute to confirm his presence at the test that will be held this Sunday in Texas, one of his favorite tracks. He has prevailed in it in seven of his eight visits, and the only time he did not (2019) was due to a fall when he was driving at the front of the peloton, with a considerable margin of advantage in his favor. That silly accident opened the door through which Alex Rins slipped in, who claimed his first win there in the heavy bike category. If it weren’t for Suzuki’s, MotoGP would have only known one winner so far: Marc Márquez.
If the Honda rider travels to the United States, it is because he is fully recovered from the diplopia problems that occurred as a result of the fall suffered in the warm up of the Indonesian Grand Prix , and which led him to miss that appointment and the next, last Sunday in Argentina.
Unlike most injuries, double vision is either there or not, so you have to assume #93 sees well. Even more so after riding this Monday at the Alcarràs circuit (Lleida), where he once again familiarized himself with speed on a 600cc CBR. Obviously, this device has nothing to do with the RC213V that will be mounted this Friday, but given the impossibility of training with its usual prototype, the popular supercar of the golden wing brand did its service.
In the last three weeks, since the accident in Mandalika and until the last few days, Márquez has been very emotionally affected. The people around him had never seen him so emotionally affected, as his brother correctly stated, in Termas de Río Hondo. “I’ve never seen him so low,” Alex said last week. The blow against the asphalt of Lombok that the #93 took was tremendous, but probably not as much as the one that overwhelmed him when he realized that the vision problems that had made him so bitter in the past had returned. The same ones that prevented him from challenging Stefan Bradl for the Moto2 title in 2011. And the same ones as last year, that of his reappearance after nine months off due to the fracture of the humerus that took place in Jerez (2020) , led him to miss the last two stops on the calendar, in Portugal and Valencia.
On this occasion, the recovery period has been much shorter than in the two previous cases, but Márquez is fully aware that he cannot always be so ‘lucky’. Although it may sound strange and even seem cynical, Márquez is still on time for everything. Of course, his aspirations, and not only from the sports field, will surely depend on his capacity for self-control. At 29 years old, the record that precedes him places him as one of the best drivers in history, if not the best of all for what he has done and against whom he has done it. However, if the Catalan wants to continue making history, he is forced to make a change of chip to prevent the outcome of a weekend as adverse as the one in Indonesia from ending even worse than it did there.
In Mandalika, a series of factors were combined that led the multi-champion to exceed the risk limits that his current physical condition allows him. Michelin moved a rear tire there that made life impossible for a number of teams, especially Honda and Suzuki. Marquez, true to his honesty, complained less than others and focused on trying to go as fast as possible. The result was four crashes in five sessions, two of them coinciding in the second qualifying round (Q2), less than seven minutes apart. “The second could have been avoided, but it burned my blood,” he said then. These are the traps in which you should not fall, because the price you can pay for it is very high. And not only because another blow to the head that affects his sight again leads him to miss more races, but also because of the danger that accidents in MotoGP entail.
As we said, the Lleida native has hardly lost any chance of achieving what he set out to do since he knew he was going to be able to start the course: “I want to fight for the title, that’s the goal. Whether I’ll get it or not, that’s another story. But I start thinking that.” Despite having missed the last two Grands Prix, Márquez only accumulates one point less than Pecco Bagnaia in the general table; nine less than Pol Espargaró, his neighbor in the official HRC workshop and 34 less than the leader, Aleix Espargaró, when the championship has only just begun. In this sense, Austin is drawn as the ideal layout to begin to recover lost ground, given the superiority it has always shown here. However, the dominance he has always shown on this track can also turn against him. Especially now that prudence prevails over daring.
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Photo by: Xaveria Yunita
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Photo by: Xaveria Yunita
Photo by: Xaveria Yunita
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
