Shoulder scare for Marc Marquez

A slow accident turned nasty for MotoGP champion Marc Marquez during day one of the Jerez test, when he tumbled awkwardly in the gravel and needed a trip to the Medical Centre.

The Repsol Honda rider, who underwent major surgery to cure frequent dislocations of his left shoulder one year ago, suffered "some luxation" (dislocation) of his right shoulder in the final corner accident.

Shoulder scare for Marc Marquez

A slow accident turned nasty for MotoGP champion Marc Marquez during day one of the Jerez test, when he tumbled awkwardly in the gravel and needed a trip to the Medical Centre.

The Repsol Honda rider, who underwent major surgery to cure frequent dislocations of his left shoulder one year ago, suffered "some luxation" (dislocation) of his right shoulder in the final corner accident.

Fortunately for Marquez, while the shoulder injury was painful, he was able to continue work on the 2020 RCV prototype.

"It was my mistake. I went wide and Turns 5, 9 and 13 have kind of wet patches out of the line, especially in the morning," Marquez explained. "I hit the wet part and lost the front.

"It was very slow but I arrived in the gravel with not a good position and I think I had, not a complete luxation, but some luxation of my right shoulder. The good one.

"For that reason I went to the Medical Centre to check everything was okay. It was painful, but I could continue working because it's important to test the new parts."

Marquez, who had been fourth fastest at the time of his spill, eventually dropped to sixth on the timesheets, 1.096s from Yamaha's Maverick Vinales.

"After the crash I reduced the pace and just tried the new things," Marquez said. "I'm happy because we worked in a good way and took a lot of information for the Japanese to improve the bike over the winter."

Marquez had three machines in his garage on Monday, including a pair of 2020 prototypes.

"One is the current bike and the other two were with the first step of the new engine with a different chassis [on each]," Marquez explained. "It's there [the chassis] where we are trying to understand the way.

"We are trying to understand especially here in Jerez where the chassis is very important and we saw in these special conditions - because the grip was so high but so critical with the cold temperature - the Yamaha and Suzuki worked very good.

"I have two different [2020] chassis. At the moment it's some improvement but some big positive points and big negative points. It's a big change and it's there that they try to make two different directions, now try to understand and then make just one direction for February.

"On the engine side, it's the first step of 2020, it has some positive points, some negative points."

Monday also marked the first time that Marc and younger brother Alex were working from the same pit garage.

"We are just concentrating on my side of the box, he is concentrating on his side, because I'm trying the new bikes and he's just trying to learn the category," Marc said. "But today already was just 1.2s slower than me, I need to keep pushing because you never know about the team-mate!"

Alex was 17th out of the 22 riders and top rookie.

“Today we tried to improve and close the distance to the front while learning how to work with my team for next year," said reigning Moto2 champion Alex. "Throughout the day we were able to make steady improvements and I was able to work a lot with used tyres, to understand how I need to change my riding to make the most out of them.

"We didn’t fit any new tyres at the end as it started raining a little bit, but I am happy. I think today went better than both days in Valencia as I was more comfortable right away.”

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