Marc Márquez will arrive at the Brno Circuit, the second weekend of August, with the iunknown about his fitness, in the process of recovering from his humerus fracture, and being aware that the French Fabio Quartararo has started the World Cup in a devastating way.
‘QuartarHéros‘read the headline on the cover of Monday July 20 of the sports newspaper L’Equipe, one of the most prestigious in the world. A play on words between the surname of the winner of the first MotoGP race of 2020 and the word ‘hero’, on a full-page photo of the French rider looking at the Jerez sky from the top of the podium. Seven days later, the sports daily chose the same protagonist, this time with the headline ‘Diabolical’, using the nickname used by the winner this Sunday of the first Grand Prix of Andalusia in history, again Quartararo, ‘El diablo’.
Two consecutive wins that place him at the top of the general classification with ten points advantage over Maverick Viñales, who despite this positive situation can not avoid the bitter feeling of not having been able to beat a rival with less experience in the category, who is enrolled in the Yamaha satellite team (yes, with a 2020 motorcycle) and with which you will find from 2021 in the official box of the Japanese factory.
The victory of Quartararo and, above all, the way to achieve it, with a devastating pace that led him to reach eight seconds of advantage in the race, have also made the Frenchman acquire the gallons of title favorite, always with the permission of the absent Marc Márquez.
«I have won twice and when he returns to the track I will want to do the same. I have nothing to prove to him, nor he to me. He is an eight-time world champion, more would be missing », he assumed Quartararo, who has before him the challenge of being champion from a satellite structure, something unprecedented in the MotoGP era (Valentino Rossi took the last of the 500cc in 2001 outside the official Honda team that included Alex Crivillé and Ukawa).
“It remains to be seen under what conditions he will return in Brno, whether he will be able to press 100% or not. This will make a difference. Marc He has made mistakes only a year, then he has always been ahead of the others. In fact, if you take a look at their history, when he has a precise objective he makes fewer mistakes than the others. I think in the end he will be in the fight for the title », Andrea Dovizioso reasoned, third overall, and the driver who has been closest to Marquez in recent seasons. The Italian appealed to two factors in favor of Spanish: the reliability it has achieved, with its devastating 2019 as the most recent example, and the problems that have been glimpsed with yamaha motor, the scope of which remains to be elucidated.
Although the big question that now opens is to understand how the Spanish champion arrives at the next appointment on the calendar, the Grand Prix of the Czech Republic on the weekend of August 9, which will link with those of Austria (August 16 ) and Styria (August 23, in the same scenario as the previous one). His status will mark his options, although the one that should be a challenge, the one to overcome, will have a second component, to stop Quartararo.
“Mathematically, whenever there are options it is possible”, he explained Marquez on Saturday afternoon, when he was already aware of the two zeros that are going to shine in his locker at the start of the third grand prize of the year, and even without knowing that Quartararo was going to have 50 points. «I will work from this Saturday to arrive in the best conditions to Brno, because I see it as possible. There are many races ahead. And if you can’t win, you can’t, but by will and effort it won’t be ».
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