‘The nightmare is not finished for Marc Marquez...'

Marquez will undergo a fourth major surgery on his right arm which will rule him out long-term - he admitted that his recovery will have next season in mind.

The Repsol Honda rider fractured his arm in 2020 and will travel to the US to go under the knife on Tuesday. He looked uncomfortable during the MotoGP Grand Prix of Italy on Sunday, where he finished 10th.

“They have reached a point where the injury is hampering him,” Guintoli, the Suzuki test rider, said on BT Sport.

“He isn’t comfortable on the bike. He is suffering, he can see that it isn’t getting better. It is getting worse.

“The surgeons are telling: ‘It won’t be easy but we can make it better’.

“The nightmare is not finished.

“Marc is a winner. He doesn’t go out to finish 5th or to climb onto the podium in the best case scenario.

“He wants to be fighting for the championship. He wants to be winning races - that’s his mentality.

“The question now is: when will he be back? He doesn’t know himself.”

‘Honda believe’ in Marquez’s ability to reclaim MotoGP glory

“Most people would say ‘yes it is brave to take a time-out mid-season career-wise’ but Marc is safe in the knowledge that Honda believe in him,” BT pundit Michael Laverty added.

“He has a long-term contract so they will give him the ability to recover to be the Marquez of 2019.

“He knows what he can do when he is fully fit - he believes that, if he was fully fit, he’d be putting that bike on the podium for race wins.

“He’s a racer. He has developed the ability to deliver every weekend.

“Even though he is having reasonable results - 5th or 6th which is good for the majority in the paddock - it isn’t good enough for Marc.

“It doesn’t feed the fire that he needs.”

Six-time MotoGP world champion Marquez has been plagued by injury since missing the end of the 2019 season.

He said after qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello: “I realised this season that I don’t enjoy [riding now]. I’m just suffering a lot. A lot of pain. I don’t have power. I cannot ride like I want. I also start to injure the left shoulder because I’m pushing too much with the left arm.

"My performance is not bad, but it's not the one that I want. So together with the doctors we've been evaluating for a long time - even in October, when I had the first injury with my vision, I said to them ‘why we don't consider to make something in that arm?’. But the bone was not fixed completely then and they said the risk is too big. 

"Then I come back. I work a lot during these four months. But I don't see any improvement.”