Marc Marquez is broken, demoralised, desperate. So what next?
It was his words, rather than his body tumbling time after time after time, which was the most shocking thing.
“I’m not ready,” Marquez told a small group of reporters outside of his motorhome, unwilling to face the full scrutiny of the media who awaited him.
He cut the figure of a broken man.
Marquez fell five times at the Sachsenring, culminating in the warm-up before Sunday’s grand prix when he hit the ground with the hardest thud.
Unlike the previous four times, he was clearly shaken by the fall.
He was passed fit to race, so the fact that this genius rider who is so often feted for his bravery opted to walk away was a dreadful indictment of the reasons why this is happening.
His Honda bike requires “too much risk”, he has regularly said this season.
His words are evidenced by three out of four Honda riders currently nursing broken bones - the fourth emerged from a shocking crash on Friday unhurt, then admitted being “scared” of Marquez’s falls because he has “the same bike”.
Marquez has tried to remedy his machine’s limitations with bold manoeuvres but it is a method which has spectacularly backfired this season.
He drew criticism for his ambition which caused a crash in the season-opening Portimao race which left Miguel Oliveira injured.
This weekend at the Sachsenring, a Friday fall wiped out Johann Zarco who Marquez then blamed for the incident.
Zarco called that “ridiculous” and claimed Marquez is “is losing a bit of control now when he speaks”.
It has been an incident-packed 2023 for the six-time MotoGP champion yet he hasn’t even completed a grand prix yet.
He has broken two bones and missed three rounds.
All this for a season which was preceded by his documentary, where he claimed he would enter the season injury-free for the first time in years.
Instead, Marquez is broken, battered, bruised and out of the title race with just seven rounds gone.
His fundamental problem - the RC213V beneath him - will not be solved this year, he has said.
So what does Marquez do now?
What is the point of riding at the Dutch MotoGP in Assen next weekend if he can’t feasibly win, and he’s risking more physical punishment just for a top seven finish?
Marquez does currently intend on competing in Assen although those felt like the desperate words of a fallen icon trying to cling onto hope.
His options appear to be - continue taking risk, or ride sensibly and accept mediocrity for the rest of this season. The second option goes against the very essence of who Marc Marquez is.
Development on the 2024 bike can begin, and optimism can slowly gather, but the stark reality is staring Marquez in the face.
Next year will be the final year that he is tied to Honda on the biggest-money deal in MotoGP today. The next 18 months will be dominated by talk about his future.
By 2025 he will be 32, inevitably among the oldest three or so riders on the grid, and with a terrible history of injury behind him. But the brilliance will remain.
Other manufacturers will have to decide if his injury proneness is worth paying a huge contract for.
But that’s a topic for another day.
For now, the worry is that Marquez is depleting himself on a week-by-week basis. Whatever is left might no longer be worth a huge investment, or capable of challenging for championships. How Marquez navigates the next few tumultuous weeks will be critical to his MotoGP future.
