With reigning MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez breaking his arm in last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez, it means this year’s title fight has been thrown wide open.
The Repsol Honda team rider broke his upper right arm in a heavy crash late in the 25-lap race, having also recovered from a major excursion into the gravel trap earlier in the race.
Marquez has successfully undergone surgery – he travelled to Barcelona on Monday to the Hospital Universitari Dexeus. Dr Xavier Mir and his team in collaboration with Dr Barrera performed an open reduction and internal fixation of a titanium plate to the right humerus. The radial nerve was untouched and did not need intervention.
Sidelined while he recovers, Marquez’ hopes of winning a seventh MotoGP title have taken a major blow.
But Marquez isn’t out of the MotoGP title fight yet, despite the Spaniard being ruled out of this weekend’s second Jerez event, thus meaning he will have surrendered a potential 50 points in an already shortened title chase.
Although not speculating on when Marquez might return, Repsol Honda team manager Alberto Puig warned that Marquez’s speed advantage over his rivals is ‘still growing year-by-year’ despite pre-season concerns over the handling of the latest RC213V bike.
“Now we are facing the challenge of Marc’s injury, but this is racing, we are a strong team and somehow, we will overcome,” Puig said.
“When you have an injured rider almost nothing is positive. But on the other hand, everyone saw and understood the level of Marc (at Jerez at the weekend).
“In Qatar [test] some people had doubts about Marc’s performance. Today it’s more than clear that there is no question mark about this. His package, Honda RC213V and himself, are clearly two steps ahead.
“He was not just a bit quicker, he was much faster than anyone else. And the difference; like it or not, is still growing year after year.”
With the 2020 MotoGP season reduced to just 16 races for the premier class because of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, it means that, after this weekend’s round two of MotoGP class action at Jerez, there will be only 14 races left, but that’s still 400 points up for grabs for the race winners.
Surely that’s enough and even a 50-point deficit, assuming Frenchman Fabio Quartararo wins again this weekend like he did last time out, is not an impossible deficit for a man as supremely talented as Marquez to overcome? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Photo courtesy HRC Honda
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