Marc Marquez’s victory at Misano continues to provoke reactions in MotoGP. It took 1,043 days for the eight-time world champion to win a race again, at Aragon. But just seven days later came his second triumph, at the San Marino Grand Prix. A double that he had not achieved in the same year since 2021 and consecutively since 2019, before his injury.
The Spaniard took advantage of the rain that began to fall more heavily on the track to play it out by overtaking his rivals from his fourth position (after having already recovered from eighth on the grid). He took the lead of the race following the strategy of not stopping in the pits. Later, when the intensity of the rain decreased, Marquez imposed a relentless pace, distancing himself from Pecco Bagnaia and beating him at home.
One of the most significant reactions to this victory was that of his crew chief this season at the Gresini Racing team, Frankie Carchedi. The British rider spoke to the British broadcaster MotoGP TNT Sportsand analysed the performance of the #93. Carchedi feared that the crash in Q2 would ruin all their chances, but the work done during the tests, looking for race pace, gave them a vital clue.
“Marc has worked really hard this week, and I really thought we made a mistake in qualifying, because, especially in Misano, the start determines the course of the race,” he began. “We used the same tyre for 28 laps on Saturday morning, but that was the reason why we used the medium and not the soft in the race, because we knew that in the last six or seven laps it was at the limit. You could go up to lap 18 and it worked very well.”
Afterwards, Márquez’s crew chief admitted that the rain had helped the rider from Cervera, but stressed that he had already recovered and that it was courage that made the difference: “Of course the rain helped Marc to lead the race, but he was already in a relatively good position. So yes, he would have been there. Would he have been able to overtake without the rain? I’m not so sure. But Marc, in these conditions… is the bravest of the brave.”
“With everything that was going on, Marc obviously saw that Jorge was coming into the pits and that he had a chance to win. I don’t know how many we’ll have this year,” he continued, speaking of Márquez coming into the race with a lot to gain and nothing to lose.
Many are wondering how many more chances Marquez will have to win races in 2024, before his move to the factory Ducati team, and whether this will lead him to fight for the title, being 53 points behind Jorge Martin. Carchedi does not rule it out completely, but acknowledges that the situation is not yet perfect and that details still need to be fine-tuned to avoid crashes like the one in Q2. But he makes it clear that race pace is not an issue in order to win.
“I’ll say exactly what Marc said. In Aragón we had a perfect weekend, from the beginning. Everything was perfect. Here (in Misano, ed.) not everything was perfect. We had the pace. We worked a lot to start Friday much closer together. It’s a question of working with the rider. The more you work, the more you understand, and we can start closer together. But we still have to understand these details. Honestly, qualifying could have cost us dearly this weekend. Because the pace was clear for us. That was never the problem, we just have to fix these small details,” summed up Joan Mir’s former crew chief when he won the MotoGP World Championship in 2020.
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