Expert judgement on the issue that made Marc Marquez angry

The dynamics between Marc Marquez and his brother, Gresini Racing’s Alex Marquez, has been heavily scrutinised with both fighting at the front end of the MotoGP grid this season.

From 20 races this season so far – 10 Sprint Races and 10 Grands Prix - the Marquez brothers have finished 1-2 an outrageous 14 times, with Marc winning all but one battle between them, when Alex finished first in the Silverstone Sprint.

After the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello, where they had another 1-2 - Marc led Alex by almost two seconds at finish line - critics put a big question mark whether the younger Marquez held himself back in a battle compared to when he faced another rider such as Francesco Bagnaia.

They finished 1-2 again in last weekend’s Sprint before Alex Marquez retired from the Grand Prix after an accident with Pedro Acosta, breaking his hand in the process.

Marc expressed his anger at criticism that his brother wasn’t racing him hard enough, pointing to his own defensive methods to prevent a chasing rider from attacking.

Michael Laverty and Sylvain Guintoli – veteran riders with wealth of experience, including in MotoGP who are now working as pundits – had their say.

Laverty, who has 37 MotoGP races under his belt, said that a bigger and faster MotoGP bike – compared to a World Superbike machine - gives Alex no opportunity to make a move against Marc.

“If you watch World Superbikes you see that it’s possible to make a move after you go through the fast right at Turn 12, into the direction change,” he told TNT Sports.

“But in MotoGP that straight is so much shorter,

“You could see that [Alex] was getting the run, but there wasn’t enough room to get alongside. These bikes are wider than Superbikes, as well. Easily, you could take a handlebar at 200mph through that kink.

“It would have been opportunistic. There were moments where he possibly could have snuck through on the run towards the fast kink at Turn 12. But at that stage of the race, he probably thought it was too early, ‘I’ll save it and see if it arises on the last lap’.

“But the bikes are too similar, there was no opportunity.”

Meanwhile Guintoli, who was a regular point-scorer in MotoGP in the mid 00s, highlighted aerodynamics as another factor that makes such a pass from Alex Marquez to Marc deemed impossible.

“With the aero load, the bikes become hard to turn. It is much harder to sneak in at a high speed. The bikes just want to go in a straight line. I don’t think he had an opportunity to pass.

“When you think Marc Marquez down, he fights back!”

Marc Marquez started the Assen weekend on the backfoot after two crashes on Friday, and bad qualifying on Saturday morning where slotted fourth on the grid.

But, that didn’t stop him from winning the Saturday Sprint Race.

“He was on the back foot, he had those two massive crashes [on the Friday]. He was clearly in pain and didn’t have a good qualifying,” Guintoli said after the Sprint Race.

“When you think he’s down, he fights back! What a race he did, unbelievable.”

In the end, he did the double by winning Sunday’s Grand Prix, his first Dutch TT win since 2018.

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