There are already those who dare to question the future of Marc Marquez Alenta. There are already those who think that it will not be the same as before. Those take many weeks and a lot of great prizes, not only announcing that if he continues to risk at the controls of an ineffective Honda he will end up doing even more damage, but remembering his last numbers that, indeed, are disastrous.
Márquez, eight times world champion and the only rider who still exudes in the MotoGP ‘paddock’ the feeling that he would win with any other motorcycle that was not the Hondahas begun to make decisions, not about his personal life, but about his sports career and, above all, about his behavior on the track.
the eternal smile
The smile, at least outwardly, has never ceased to accompany him. No matter how many disasters accumulate around him at a technical and sporting level, MM93 He always faces with an enormous predisposition and with his best smile, his trademark, the hallmark of mother Roser Alentáthe press conferences he stars in throughout a grand prize.
Another thing is when he locks himself in with his technical team, led by the Engineer Santi Hernandezor with the Japanese technicians of HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) who manage the MotoGP project. There are no smiles there and there is a lot of worry, uncertainty, disappointment and too many, many doubts.
On a personal level, Márquez has insisted a thousand times that he is going through the happiest moment of his life. On a physical level, despite the many falls and injuries that have occurred in the first half of the championship, because of wanting to achieve the same results as always with a disastrous bike, the champion from Cervera (Lleida), now residing in Madrid, He is as strong as in his best moments.
But, unfortunately for him, this is a sport where the motorcycle is much more than 50% of the success and the Honda, last Saturday, in Silverstone (GB)came to have on Saturday, with seven minutes left to finish the training sessions, his four official RC213V in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 22nd positions. A real disaster.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen the results. Maybe my mistake was insisting on doing something big with a bike that isn’t ready for that”
One thing is the present and another, very different, the future of Marc Márquez. The present starts from two vital points. One, the Catalan pilot has a contract in force until the end of 2024 and he always keeps his word, especially if it is the brand of a lifetime, the brand that has given him everything and, when he was injured, has always given him expected and supported. And if MM93 has something, it is that it is grateful.
And two: the future, even 2024, depends on a key training: 9/11, Misano. That is the day and the circuit where the factories give their pilots the first prototype of 2024, if they have it, of course, and the preparation and development of the bike with which they will race the following year begins. If Honda does not deliver a new, different, competitive motorcycle that day or one that seems to be able to be evolved quickly, Márquez will make the decision to start meditating on how he can get rid of the contract that binds him to the winged brand and find another destination. At this time, none of those responsible for the Japanese firm that goes to the circuits knows, for sure, whether or not Honda will take a rocket to Misano. Everything seems not, but….
zero risk
While that decisive day arrives, Márquez, who with his comments and internal talks with all his engineers has already told them that this bike is not going any further and, therefore, it is not a matter of retouching but of designing and building a new motorcycle, He does not intend to play his physique. He has suffered enough already. Enough damage has already been done. And, in that sense, he just waits for Honda’s reaction to try to be the same as before.
Márquez knows very well that, now, he is stuck in the quagmire, but it has been Honda who has muddied the present and raises doubts about his future. Hence he praises and hopes to copy the resurrection of his brother Alex, who from not having a place on the grid in 2023, has gone on to win. Hence he visited Rafael Nadalhis reference in everything, to feed back, both, of his grit and ambition with a view to his recovery and win again in unison.
“At Silverstone, I was reminded a lot of Germany where, because I wanted to do what the bike didn’t allow me to do, I fell four times and sustained three injuries. That won’t happen again. I’m not going to play it if the bike doesn’t work”, remarked Marc on the English track. Where, at the end of the grand prix, he acknowledged: “This mentality is not the one I like, but to go back to being the one I was before I have to start from scratch. I have to do what this weekend, forget about the time screens The time will come to press”.
“This mentality is not the one I like, but to go back to being the one I was before I have to start from scratch. The time will come to push”
It was there, in Silverstone, where He explained in great detail what the strategy is in these great prizes. “I have stopped having two different motorcycles, with different chassis, different electronics, different suspensions, it was driving me crazy. The goal now is to find a stable bike, with which I feel comfortable and with which, when they bring in a new part, I can say if it’s worth it or not”. And he said more: “I have stopped seeing the results, the time table for a long time. I will think of them again when we are competitive”.
Jokes with Fabio
Despite the fact that the demons eat him inside because he considers that, after so much sacrifice, operations and extremely painful recoveries, he does not deserve to be like this, Márquez has not lost, I insist, the usual smile. What’s more, at the end of his disastrous race at the ‘sprint’ on Saturday that his brother won (“it doesn’t matter to finish 18th to 29 seconds, than 10 to 20”), he admitted, between laughs, that he had not realized that the The winner was Àlex, which shows how carefree he was on the bike.
After his fall in the race on Sunday and Checking that the other great champion, Fabio Quartararo, lives a similar situation at Yamaha, he chose to make jokes with the Frenchmanwho wrote him a twitter saying “what a great grip you had”, to which Márquez replied “come on, your top speed…”.
2023-08-09 06:28:44
#smile #worry
