Many observers, during this season, have expressed their opinion on Marc Marquez's return to full competitiveness.
Then came 2020 in which Marc at Jerez showed such an embarrassing superiority over his rivals that he probably forgot his good intentions. Marquez in 2019 greatly reduced the number of his errors, and he often talked about this philosophy and how it had become important to settle for placements so as to avoid physical harm that, statistically, can jeopardize the performance of a champion over the course of his career. Of course, the competitiveness of MotoGP has increased a lot in the years between the ‘80s and ‘90s but, in the end, three riders have always fought for the title. Marc has never made any secret of his method: looking for the limit until he crashed in the two days of practice before the Grand Prix in order to be deadly and close to that 100% pure performance limit on race day.Ī philosophy certainly closer to a champion like Kevin Schwantz, who, however, had inferior machinery than someone like Eddie Lawson who, rather than make a mistake, settled for a podium. We are talking about 122 crashes over 9 seasons, including the last one, which have earned him an incredible haul of 6 world titles, 59 victories, 99 podiums. Subsequently he crashed 17 times in 2016 (5 wins), 27 even in 2017 (6 wins) and 23 in 2018 (9 wins), then reduced the errors to almost half, 14 in 2019 (12 wins), up to year of his accident (2 crashes). In 2015, the year he lost the title, he fell 13 times, winning 5 Grands Prix. The following year he confirmed the title, dominating the season with 13 wins and 'just' 11 crashes. In 2013, the year of his first world championship title, Marc in fact crashed 15 times, winning 6 Grands Prix. Proof of this comes not only in the number of crashes recorded by the Cervera rider in this troubled return season, in which he nevertheless won three Grands Prix in his two kingdoms of Sachsenring and Austin, as well as one in the less hospitable circuit of Misano, but also in the comparison with the past years. Elbow saves, with his front tyre askew, Marquez is no longer capable of doing them today … for the moment. If not in one not negligible detail: due to the imperfect condition of his right shoulder, Marc today is able to make his now legendary ‘ saves’ much less frequently. This tells us only one thing: the crash of 19 July 2020, at Jerez, with a broken bone in his right arm, while he was in third place after a crazy comeback, did nothing to change the eight-time world champion. It’s a very narrow margin: just one more crash than Marc Marquez who, however, missed the first two GPs of the year, returning only at Portugal with a very decent 7th place, after coming back from a one-year stop. This year only Iker Lecuona – who’s been dumped by KTM and who next season will be in Superbike with Honda – has crashed more than him, 23 times.