Marc Márquez: «There is no pain»

When Marc Márquez entered the pit lane after finishing fourth in the Japanese Grand Prix, his entire team came to the door of the box to receive him with a standing ovation. That warm welcome was not as important as the fact that the Spaniard got off the bike without making any gesture of pain, or stretching his arm and he shook hands with each member of his team vehemently, without cutting himself to the time to be effusive. “If something hurts unconsciously you touch it or you protect it,” he said minutes later when he appeared before the media: “His arm has ended up tired, but there is no pain like before the operation. One thing is a tired arm and another arm with pain. That pain reaches the head and that not even adrenaline supplies it ». A very graphic way of explaining it and that gives an idea of ​​what the Cervera rider had to go through.

The balance that can be made of your weekend is very positive. On a sporting level, he added his first pole on Saturday almost three years later and a valuable fourth place on Sunday, being by far the best Honda. And physically, he finished his first complete race in four months and finished “whole” in the circuit of the calendar that punishes his arms the most. Motegi was going to be the cotton test for that humerus that had been operated on four times already. A track with strong braking and powerful acceleration, in which it is difficult to run 24 laps without being very prepared.

Probably almost all the circumstances have been aligned to have a more placid career than expected. When he announced his return to Aragon, he already warned that his priority was his physique and he would have no qualms about skipping a race if his arm asked him to rest. He hinted that the Motegi appointment could be the one chosen to stop, although his trip to Japan was never in doubt because there he took the opportunity to speak with the senior staff of Honda and incidentally ask for greater involvement in the MotoGP project. After the withdrawal of Aragón without having completed a full lap, he traveled without many kilometers of competition in his arm. And during the last weekend, the cancellation of two of the four free practices; and the wet day on Saturday (in the wet, the physical demand is less) allowed him to face a relatively cool Sunday. Something that he recognized later: «We have to be realistic, in a totally dry weekend in all the sessions the position would not have been fourth».

the end of the race

On the grid, Márquez had decided to mount the soft rear tire on his Honda to take advantage of his strength at the start of the race and thinking that in the final laps he would have to let himself go. More than managing the race, the strategy was to see how far the arm would go. There was a lot of uncertainty because since his return, he had never done more than seven laps on a MotoGP bike, so from the second half of the race onwards it was like a kind of leap into the void.

He found in the figure of the Portuguese Oliveira a good wheel to follow. Lap by lap he was constant, doing all his laps in a time of 1’46, except for his personal fastest lap (1’45.930). Marc himself was surprised at how well he was finishing the race and allowed himself the luxury of attacking Oliveira with three laps to go and gaining a position. In his circumstances, it didn’t matter if he was fifth or fourth, but that overtaking had a symbolic value for the Catalan: «It had been a long time since he could attack at the end. Before it was the other way around, they always attacked me.

You won’t be able to savor an unforgettable weekend for long because the MotoGP World Championship now travels to Thailand, where a new appointment on the calendar will take place this weekend. It will be another litmus test for Marquez. Not so much because of the circuit’s own demands as because of the harsh conditions of heat and humidity that they will face in this part of Southeast Asia, but as long as there is no pain…