“I need to have some patience in these first few races. Because sometimes you can lose the championship in the first two-to-three races.”
When it comes to digging an early-season hole too deep to climb out of, Marc Marquez should have as good an idea as anybody on how to do it.
In 2015, his first MotoGP title defeat, he lost around 70 points to the Yamahas of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo in the first seven races. In 2017, he shipped a remarkable 37 points to Maverick Vinales in the first two grands prix – a margin that really should’ve proven unassailable had the Vinales/Yamaha combination lived up to that early form. And in 2020… well, I don’t need to remind you what happened.
It is, therefore, no surprise to see Marquez preaching patience, especially on the heels of an off-season that he’d spent recovering from diplopia, which, though now gone, will have left him unable to keep working on his fitness levels.
The 2022 Qatar opener marked the rarest of occasions, a race in which Marquez took the chequered flag behind his factory Honda team-mate – for the first time since Valencia 2017. But though he jovially described Pol Espargaro’s ascendance as “good news for the team – for me, no”, the result, by all appearances, did not sting. And the way Marquez put it, it’s because it fit into his grander plan.
“If I finish fifth – it’s not because I want to finish fifth, it’s because I don’t have more,” he told MotoGP.com. “So, we need to find a way to improve, but of course, we are thinking of the championship.
“And I already said in Mandalika [in testing] – some people said ‘ah, he’s lying’… we are not ready these first races to fight for the victory. We will see in Mandalika, we will see in Argentina but we keep going.”
This is not the first time in his career that Marquez has accentuated banking points – those who remember his 2016-2018 titles may also recall him divvying up tracks into those he marked on the calendar as must-wins and those where he just wanted to be on the podium or close enough.
And Qatar has definitely always fitted into the second category. It is probably not quite his worst MotoGP circuit, but it is closer to the bottom of the ranking than the top, with just the one win to his name – during that absurdly dominant 2014 run.
That context makes the result of the 2022 race more positive. But it also makes it much easier to accept – Marquez has had to settle for some merely decent Qatar results in the past, and he has always seemingly kept his cool there, making the finish on each occasion.
The next three tracks, before the start of the European leg, are a different story – and are likely to present a much sterner test of Marquez’s philosophy.
Mandalika is a question mark – Marquez was one of the riders who looked strong in testing at the new Indonesian venue, but hardly a runaway favourite. But it’s getting half-repaved and the grip might be quite low, which is prime Marquez territory. Rain is also forecast, which, again, would play into his hands.
And then you get the one-two punch of Termas de Rio Hondo and Circuit of the Americas. Marquez’s prowess at the latter is well-documented – the only time he lost there is when he chucked his Honda down the road from the position of a commanding lead – but he’s also a genuine Termas ace, aided by its varying weather and low grip.
And he also has previous for getting impatient to his detriment in Argentina – recall the infamous 2018 race, in which he first earned a ride-through for not following the correct restart procedure after stalling on the grid, and then fired off both Aleix Espargaro and Valentino Rossi in his charge back through the field.
In Qatar, it will have helped that it’s not traditionally his territory – and that each of the four of his likeliest title rivals scored less. Fabio Quartararo and Joan Mir both had muted outings, while Francesco Bagnaia took Jorge Martin down with himself.
But they are unlikely to be so accommodating in the next few races, and team-mate Espargaro will also look to strike when the iron is hot.
If Marquez really isn’t quite ready to win – either because of his physical condition or because he’s still not entirely gelled with the radically new RC213V – will he accept that in the next three grands prix? Or will he push beyond his limits, as he often seemed to do last year – which featured crashes at Le Mans (two), Mugello, Barcelona, Red Bull Ring and Silverstone?
Obviously, staying on while going fast enough not to give up too much ground in the title race is easier said than done. But if Marquez manages to walk that tightrope, he’s one rider who might just make the 2022 title fight a lot less exciting down the stretch than it currently promises to be.
