Bizarre cause revealed for costly Marquez ruling delay

Marc Marquez's Japanese Grand Prix weekend has been compromised by a qualifying laptime deletion delay that had an unusual cause.

Marquez's 1m42.868s, which if it were legal would've secured him pole position and the new Motegi lap record, was deleted due to him clipping the green paint while coming off the kerb on exit of Turn 4.

Yet it had taken longer than usual, conspicuously so, for the deletion to be announced.

Marquez had set his time with over two and a half minutes left on the clock, and was still on track but cruising off the pace, about to take the chequered flag, when the lap was officially erased from the timing screens.

It meant he got no chance at logging another representative laptime, consigning him to ninth on the grid.

Marquez and his Gresini team were clearly irritated by how Q2 had played out, though a charge from ninth to third in the sprint seemed to lighten things up a bit.

And while the impression at the time of qualifying had been that it simply took a while for race control to manually look into footage of Marquez's breach and be certain that the lap warranted deletion, it emerged in the end that it was not the decision that was delayed - but news of the decision.

"They [the stewards] had a connection problem," Marquez said. 

"With their message - to the team, to the TVs, to all these things. The system was blocked and they couldn't send that notification.

"That was the unlucky thing because with another lap I think I was in the second row in an easy way."

A technical issue being the culprit in the pivotal delay in communicating the laptime deletion was something quickly corroborated by The Race's sources in the paddock and then officially confirmed in a statement issued to The Race from MotoGP race director Mike Webb.

The track limits sensor was triggered immediately, which leads to the automatic cancellation of any lap," said Webb.

"The FIM MotoGP stewards entered it into the system right away, but unfortunately, a software glitch interrupted this process and meant the lap then needed to be cancelled manually, causing a delay to the notification."

Marquez told British broadcaster TNT Sports that it was impossible to be sure one way or another while on the bike whether he had breached track limits - and that, having seen the laptime stand, he decided not to risk going for another all-out flyer.

Webb added that changes had quickly been made to prevent a repeat.

"This is the first time this has happened in thousands of track limits infractions investigated each season," he said.

"The cause of this glitch has been located and the system adjusted in order to ensure it cannot happen again."