Marc Marquez said the error that cost him Austin victory and the MotoGP world championship lead was a minor misjudgement at a time when he was just trying to control the race and ease to victory.
Having successfully averted the prospect of starting on the wrong tyres by sprinting off the grid to get his slick-shod bike, and then having benefitted from race direction calling the aborted start he hoped would ensue, Marquez quickly pulled away from the field and seemed on course for yet another dominant Circuit of the Americas win.
But while leading by 2.4 seconds approaching half-distance, Marquez lost control over the kerbs at the fast downhill Turn 4.
“I was too much on the kerbs and I lost it super-quick,” he admitted. “Maybe I cut too much and I don’t know if it was still a bit wet or something like this.”
MORE DRAMA! 💥💥💥💥@marcmarquez93 HAS GONE DOWN! #AmericasGP 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/JWVRiiJYFt
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) March 30, 2025
His Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia inherited the lead and went on to his first victory of 2025.
“I know that the win came because of the crash of Marc,” Bagnaia conceded.
“He was faster than us and everybody else today so I was just trying to match the pace in the best way possible.”
But Bagnaia suggested he’d deliberately taken a more conservative approach to the wet kerbs.
“I was seeing that he [Marquez] was very aggressive on the kerbs. To be that competitive, you had to cut the kerb a lot in corner four and it probably was still a bit wet,” said Bagnaia.
“Normally I was trying to go on it, but today I wasn’t for that situation because in the warm-up lap I touched it a little bit and the grip wasn’t that good.
“As soon as I saw him entering that much on the kerb, I saw him losing the front.”
Marquez rejoined 18th after the crash and attempted to make the finish on his battered bike, which had lost parts including a footpeg and most of its windshield as it slid along the track and over the kerbs on its side.
He persisted for a few laps before retiring having realised he was unlikely to score points.
"The problem was the foot peg," Marquez explained.
"When I hit the kerb of Turn 5, I broke the foot peg and then it was difficult to continue.
"I continued for three laps but then when I saw that I was 19th, I said ‘four or five riders will not crash’. If you are 15th, 16th, then you try to stay there. But for that reason I decided to retire."
Marquez’s crash means he loses the championship lead to brother Alex by one point, and allows Bagnaia to close to within 11 of him.
“I lost a lot of points,” Marc acknowledged.
“But racing is like this - and I keep saying the championship changes in one millisecond.
“The most important thing and the positive is that even with doing that big mistake still we are equal in the points, we are one point behind the leader.”
