Honda’s six-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez has revealed he considered missing more races after making his return from a long injury absence earlier this year.
A bad right-arm injury that first came from a big crash at Jerez – and was then exacerbated – kept Marquez on the sidelines for most of 2020, and he didn’t rejoin the MotoGP grid until three races into this year’s campaign.
And though Marquez has proven competitive – finishing in the top 10 in both Portimao and Jerez before crashing out of the lead in the wet at Le Mans – he admits there were conversations about returning to the sidelines for a brief spell.
“In fact, we spoke and [there] was a possibility, for example after Jerez, to stop again,” Marquez said after rebuking the suggestion that he may have come back too early. “And we considered and we spoke with the doctors and everything.
“But in the end even the doctors said it was good to reintroduce into my life, into my racing mode, riding a bike, my bike that is a MotoGP – because you can ride different kinds of bikes but in the end you need to ride a racing bike if you want to improve.”
The question of whether his comeback was premature came up because Marquez admitted he was expecting “not the best weekend” at the famously physically-demanding Mugello circuit.
The bone Marquez broke, the right humerus, continues to heal well, but he said it was now the right shoulder that was making his life difficult.
“Last week, I was in another doctor check, and the arm comes better, so this is the most important,” he said. “Now we are checking well what’s going on in the shoulder, because it’s my main limitation now.
“But I know that here just I need to understand my situation, just try to find a good speed for my condition and just ride and finish my weekend.
“I mean, there’s no meaning in pushing too much, stressing too much my physical condition and my mind, because anyway I know where are the problems.”
Having been kept by doctors’ advice from riding between races after his initial return, Marquez has now had a track day on the Honda CBR600RR – which took place at a local Catalan track, Mora d’Ebre – in the lead-up to Mugello.
It is believed, however, that the ‘track day’ only lasted one pit exit before the short, corner-heavy venue took at toll on his shoulder.
“Normally I never ride this kind of bike, but on Tuesday I was riding this bike to understand well how was my situation and my position on the bike,” he explained.
“Immediately I understood that now I cannot ride in a good position, because if I ride in a good position, the pain in the shoulder is much more.”
Marquez had surgery on his right shoulder in late 2019 – a year after surgery on his left shoulder – due to a recurring dislocation.
“The thing is that, when you break the humerus, the humerus is connected with the shoulder – the shoulder I already had surgery on in the past. And maybe it was not 100 percent, but was working well, like 2020 in Jerez.
“But now the humerus is ready to push, but now when you do another step, after this big injury, then it’s coming small things. Small things doesn’t mean that the shoulder is in a really bad situation.
“The shoulder has something that isn’t working in a proper way, and we are trying to understand, why during a weekend the pain is coming more, at home also, relaxed, not relaxed, the pain is there always. But it’s normal, or the doctors say it’s normal, after a broken humerus, it’s normal that the shoulder, or the elbow, is affected.
“And in this case now it’s coming small things from the shoulder that are disturbing [me] more than what we expected.”
