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Marc Marquez admits he is alarmed by the rate of crashes and injuries within the Honda MotoGP camp, suggesting it comes from the intersection of the RC213V’s current deficiencies and the “winner mentalities” within the line-up.
Honda looked to have upgraded its line-up significantly in the off-season with the arrival of Joan Mir (to the factory team) and Alex Rins (at LCR), both snapped up after Suzuki pulled out.
But a promising start for Mir has devolved completely into a non-stop run of crashes, and while Rins has shone occasionally – including with a spectacular Grand Prix of the Americas win – he has been erratic.
And crucially, neither was in action in the Italian Grand Prix today. A Friday fall at San Donato for Mir – a scarcely-believable 12th crash of the season already – ruled him out with a finger injury, and a sprint crash at Arrabbiata fractured Rins’ leg, removing him from the equation not just for the Italian GP but potentially much further into the season given early reports of the severity of the injury.
Marquez, for his part, crashed out while battling for the podium on Sunday, falling off on the outside of Bucine as he tried to find a way past Luca Marini and gesticulating in exasperation towards his bike laying in the gravel.
He said he had the pace to be around sixth or seventh, so was running “already better”.
Asked what he’s missing to be more competitive, Marquez said: “It’s what all the Honda riders are missing. And we need to change that way. The inertia we are taking, we need to change.
“Friday was Mir, yesterday was Rins. I wish the best recovery for both of them. Today was me. Lucky for me, I escaped from that crash. In this circuit I was trying to control myself a lot because I know that in a crash with high speed normally you get injured, like Mir and Rins.
“But yeah, we are crashing too much.
“Honda have riders with a winner mentality. And if you put in riders with a winner mentality and you don’t have the chance to be [up] there, the problem is that you will crash more and more times because we are pushing more than the others to be on that laptime. And this is what happened.
“But yeah, I keep going, I keep pushing and we need to be together and work with the team to change the situation for the future, for these next races, the second part of the season and especially for next year.”
The Kalex chassis that had debuted at Le Mans last month seemed to provide a boost but was, according to Marquez, not the best fit for Mugello’s long corners. But he’d stuck with it after trying out the standard Honda version on Saturday.
He said his race was already hindered at the start from an issue – “a rear problem that we need to solve” – that slowed him once he’d started upshifting, and that had already been present on Saturday and was exasperated by Sunday’s hotter conditions.
Of the crash, he said: “I had a big shake – already in the first lap I had a big locking on Turn 10 [Scarperia] that meant I nearly crashed, and I didn’t understand it, similar to Portimao [where he caused a multi-bike accident].
“But then I had another locking, on the brakes, then I went wide and when I was wide there was my mistake that I was on the dirty place. And I didn’t lean more than always but the track was more dirty because I was out of the line and then I lost the front.”
Marquez also revealed that “some new items” he’d asked for weren’t ready in time for Mugello.
“Unluckily here we didn’t receive them, there was not enough time in these three weeks [during the break],” he said. “But they keep working.”
