Marc Marquez is undoubtedly in a very difficult situation this MotoGP season. The eight-time world champion, now recovered from the ordeal of the arm injury suffered in Jerez in 2020, has faced this year with the desire to fight for the title again and to leave all the disappointments of recent seasons behind him.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Fate still had a big setback in store for him, a real nightmare during the first half of the current season.
So much so that the Spanish rider couldn’t wait to go on vacation after last weekend’s Dutch GP. For him, 2023 is the “worst moment” of his premier-class career, aside from injury, as he admitted late in the hat-trick, and he realized he had to reset by when the championship resumes in the first week of August.
The reasons are known. Marquez found it impossible to get good results from Honda. Beyond the mirage that was Alex Rins’ victory in Austin, the bike of the golden wing brand proved to be the most difficult on the grid alongside the Yamaha, demonstrating the negative moment that the Japanese factories are experiencing in MotoGP compared to to the European ones.
The rider from Cervera managed to find a good feeling with the RC213V only in France, after returning from injury. But the hat trick of racing that followed was a disaster for him. It was easy to understand that if Marquez didn’t push, the bike was far from reaching the leading group.
If he chose to push, he would sometimes go overboard and end up on the ground. And sometimes the bike simply let him down and he crashed without explanation, as confirmed by team manager Alberto Puig at Assen.
And he’s not the only one this has happened to. It is worth mentioning that neither Joan Mir nor Alex Rins were able to be present in Germany and Holland due to their crashes in Italy. And Takaaki Nakagami, the Honda rider who achieved the best result, was injured in a crash at the Sachsenring.
One of the facts in which the bad situation of Honda can be seen, and more precisely of the Repsol team and Marc Marquez in particular, is that both the team and the #93 lead the classification in MotoGP crashes after eight race weekends. Marquez holds first place with 14 crashes, followed by Mir, with 12, tied with Franco Morbidelli.
In this way, Marc Marquez is on course to equal or exceed accident figures, such as the 27 crashes suffered in 2017, the year in which he won his sixth world title. But with some aggravating circumstances: that this season there are still 12 Grands Prix to go, more than half, and that, moreover, of the 8 disputed, he was not present in all of them.
It should be remembered that the Catalan champion has already had a bad start to the 2023 season, due to the accident he suffered in the Portuguese Grand Prix, which opened the season. On that occasion, he went wide in the early stages of Sunday’s race and collided with Miguel Oliveira, as well as touching Jorge Martín. As a result, he sustained a fracture at the base of the thumb on his right hand, which took a long time to heal. Consequently, he was not present at Termas de Río Hondo, Assen and Jerez.
The Spanish rider returned to action at Le Mans, but since then he hasn’t raced in all the races, as the crash in the Warm-Up at Sachsenring, the fifth of the weekend in Germany, put him out of action for the long race, tired of many accidents and with a fracture to the thumb of the left hand. Later, it was also revealed that he had a cracked rib, an injury made worse by the two crashes at Assen, which also kept him out on Sunday in the Netherlands.
Surprisingly, Marquez has not scored in any of the Sunday races this year, which leaves him 19th in the general standings on just 15 points, three points behind Enea Bastianini, who has been out of the race for Portimao up to Mugello due to an injury to his right shoulder blade.
Thus, Marquez is having such a difficult start to the year that, after 8 Grands Prix, 2023 is his worst year in terms of points. Even worse than his first season in 125cc, 2008, if we start counting from his first race, in Portugal, which was the third of that championship. This, obviously, excluding the 2020 season, which was characterized by the injury to his right arm.
Season and category | Marquez’s position in the World Championship after 8 GPs |
2008 (125cc) | 14th with 33 points (best result, 3rd in GBR) |
2009 (125cc) | 7th with 55 points (best result, 3rd in ESP) |
2010 (125cc) | 1st with 157 points (5 wins) |
2011 (Moto2) | 2nd with 95 points (3 wins) |
2012 (Moto2) | 1st with 152 points (4 wins) |
2013 (MotoGP) | 1st with 138 points (2 wins) |
2014 (Moto GP) | 1st with 200 points (8 wins) |
2015 (Moto GP) | 4th with 89 points (1 win) |
2016 (Moto GP) | 1st with 145 points (2 wins) |
2017 (MotoGP) | 4th with 104 points (1 win) |
2018 (MotoGP) | 1st with 140 points (4 wins) |
2019 (MotoGP) | 1st with 160 points (4 wins) |
2020 (MotoGP) | Last with 0 points (absent due to injury) |
2021 (MotoGP) | 10th with 41 points (1 win) |
2022 (Moto GP) | 9th with 60 points (best result, 4th in ESP) |
2023 (Moto GP) | 18th with 15 points (zero points on Sunday) |
It is therefore clear how difficult Marc Marquez’s year has been. the eight times world champion will try to recharge his batteries in this summer break to come back strong and improve his results in the second half of the year. All this while waiting for Honda to give him a solution, while doubts about his future continue to grow, despite the fact that the contract with the Japanese brand is still valid for one season, until the end of 2024.
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