You are here

MotoGP, Marquez's lengthy winless drought set to stretch to 595 days at Mugello.

Injuries have conditioned Marc's recent seasons, but he might be able to end his negative streak on the track where he won his first GP in the 125 class, but which has never given him much satisfaction in MotoGP.

MotoGP: Marquez's lengthy winless drought set to stretch to 595 days at Mugello.

Share


In his career Marc Marquez has won a total of 85 Grands Prix, with only three riders doing better than him: Giacomo Agostini (122), Valentino Rossi (115) and Angel Nieto (90). His best season was 2014, when he finished on the podium in thirteen of the eighteen races on the calendar. A real cannibal, but now he's hungrier than ever.

Since that cursed Jerez GP in 2020, Marc has had no peace with injuries and only in 2021 did he have any satisfaction on the track. That year he won three races: at Sachsenring and Austin, his favourite tracks, and finally at Misano, on 24 October. Then he suffered diplopia after a crash in training on an enduro bike and missed the last two rounds of the year. 2022 was another difficult year, in which he decided, at Mugello, to stop to undergo yet another (and fortunately decisive) operation on his battered arm.

Back in the saddle, he managed to get on the podium at Phillip Island (a second place), while this year he only did it in the Portimao sprint race (third) before another injury.

With calculator in hand, our colleagues at Marca have been counting the days that will have passed since that last victory at Misano at the Mugello GP, the first opportunity to be able to win again. On Sunday 11 June 595 days will have passed, more than a year and a half without savouring that feeling of looking down on everyone on Sunday.

Before this long winless drought, Marquez had only gone so long without winning once: at the beginning of his career. The Spanish rider did his first race in the world championship in the 2008 Estoril GP (in the previous one, in Spain, he did not qualify due to a crash), but his first victory came only two years later, in 2010, curiously at Mugello: 784 days had passed. From there he never stopped, because in that year he won another 9 races, conquering his first laurel.

In just over two weeks, Marc will be back on the Tuscan track, which has never given him much satisfaction in MotoGP. In the premier class he has won only once, in 2014 which was his best year yet.

Just after the Le Mans race, the Honda rider wanted to make something clear: "here I was on a track that suited my style, at Mugello, on the other hand, the situation could be difficult, the Ducatis are strong on every track". Marc's riding style and the characteristics of the RC231V aren't the best on a track with linked-up corners and where you must make the bike flow.

The good news is that the new Kalex frame should help after what we saw in France and then there's something else. After Italy MotoGP will go to the Sachsenring and Marquez has virtually never had any rivals there. He started winning on that track in 2010 (in 125cc) and didn't stop until 2021 (in 2020 he didn't race due to Covid, in 2022 Marc wasn't there because he was recovering). His drought period might be destined to end, in couple of weeks.

 

Related articles