Marc Marquez says his early crash in the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello was both “the worst thing” and “a positive” for the next MotoGP race.
Marquez, continuing his recovery from the injury that kept him sidelined for most of 2020, exited the Mugello race on the second lap after a failed attempt to pass the KTM of Brad Binder for ninth place.
The six-time MotoGP champion lunged down the inside of Binder at Turn 2, the Luco left-hander, but didn’t quite get ahead under braking and washed out into Binder as they turned in for the subsequent right-hander Poggio Secco.
That led to Marquez falling, as he and his bike slid off to the outside of the track, compromising Petronas Yamaha rider Franco Morbidelli in the process.
“Unfortunately the race finished earlier than we expected, and was the worst thing today for me because of course I need laps, I need kilometres on the bike,” said Marquez. “I had a contact with Brad Binder, it’s true that we can say it’s a racing incident, because specifically on that point of the track many times happened similar crashes, but okay, can be a racing incident but if somebody was at fault, it’s me.
“I went into Turn 2, I missed him, I didn’t see him, I thought he was more back, and when we did the change of direction we had contact and I crashed. Luckily I crashed alone – because, like I said, was a racing incident but was my fault.
“This was okay for me. And overall during the weekend was positive, in my box, but very bad and very hard for MotoGP.
“We lost a young talent [in Jason Dupasquier], a young rider, and we lost a mate here inside the paddock.”
Binder – who wasn’t aware in the moment who he had contact with, or that Marquez ended up crashing – said the collision made his airbag go off.
“I rode with my airbag on for a whole lap. And obviously everyone knows that with the airbag on you can barely breathe, you can’t move so much on the bike,” said Binder, who went on to finish fifth.
“It was super difficult to move. So difficult to actually hang off and move and lift my arms, going into the corners and stuff.
“And the most difficult thing was to tuck in – and when you can’t hide from the wind at 350 ks per hour, your helmet comes a couple of centimetres closer to your face.”
MotoGP will race in Barcelona next weekend, and Marquez says failing to complete a race distance at the physically-demanding Mugello will at least give him “more chance to enjoy the Catalan GP”.
“Normally with many laps in a row, it’s where I suffer more, the right arm – so there we take a rest because we just did one lap and a half,” he said. “So, this will be positive for Montmelo but anyway we will see there, it’s another kind of circuit, normally we struggle a lot, in history that circuit is not one of the best for us, but we are in our way.
“This weekend we learned a lot, I feel inside me that I did a step and this is important.
“Coming from a very hard moment, still nobody knows which are my conditions, just I know and my team knows which are my conditions, and we know where we are, we know where we want to arrive, and we will try to do the correct steps.”
