Revealed: Marc Marquez ‘said no’ to last-gasp bike set-up at German MotoGP
Marc Marquez 'just gritted his teeth' rather than use a modified set-up
Marc Marquez rejected a last-minute bike set-up designed to ease injuries.
The Gresini Ducati rider preferred a machine that gave him a greater chance of a good result, even if it inflicted pain on the injuries suffered on Friday.
Marquez's crash on Friday caused a broken finger and pain to the ribs, before a frustrating qualifying session resulted in a P13 start.
But Marquez sailed to a P2 finish, behind Pecco Bagnaia who profited from Jorge Martin crashing from the lead.
Marquez also had to overcome contact with Franco Morbidelli which smashed his screen and inflated his airbag.
“Adrenaline took over. He set his fastest first sector of the weekend without a screen, without wind protection,” Marquez’s crew chief Frankie Carchedi told TNT Sports.
Carchedi paid tribute to a unique round for Marquez: “It’s a bit of an understatement. In all my years, I’ve never had a weekend like this.
“You always make a plan - how many laps, what bike you will used. We might as well have not bothered! Because nothing went to plan!
“We had a technical [problem]. We had to use the other bike.
“Saturday, we prepared everything in case he went out, which we weren’t sure about until the last second.
“It was pretty much a bonus. There was no plan that went right.
“In qualifying, we had a technical with one bike, had to jump on another, then traffic…
“Yesterday he struggled in Sector 1, the two right corners, where he had problems with his ribs.
“This morning, you don’t normally do a bike set-up for an injury. But we tried something to make it more agile to help him.
“It helped his problem. But he said ‘no’.
“Our base for FP1 was what he started the race with, and just gritted his teeth.
“We just talked about finishing and getting as many points as we can. It’s so difficult to overtake.
“Fortunately where Marc was strong, and we were strong, was the last sector.
“He set his fastest Sector 1 of the whole weekend on the last lap.”
Airbag "hurt" - "you can't breathe"
The contact with Pramac’s Morbidelli, which rocked Marquez and damaged his bike, spurred him on.
“This triggered him into action,” Michael Laverty analysed on TNT Sports.
“Frankie was wide, comes back on line. The door was open, Marc tried to stick his GP23 in there.
“Contact, the airbag goes up, the screen is broken.
“Their legs came together, it was a racing incident. It sparked something within Marc - game on!
“At the next direction change, Enea Bastianini gets past him. Even with his airbag up, he fights at the top of the hill, back on Enea.”
Sylvain Guintoli explained the impact of an airbag inflating: “It will have hurt his ribs a lot. It does deflate, but it takes time.
“When it goes off, it feels really uncomfortable. It will have hurt.
“The airbag inflated is on your arms, your sides, your back, everything feels super-tight and you can’t breathe.
“The contact with Morbidelli fired him up, he took all the risk and didn’t care.”
Laverty added: “Marc is a masochist, as soon as pain is triggered it spurs him into action. He is something exceptional.”
Guintoli said: “There is no quitting. Everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong - multiple technical problems, a crash, an injury, the traffic on-track, he couldn’t get to Q2, starting from 13th.
“Despite all this, there is no giving up. Only attacking all the time.”
However, it was the first time in nine MotoGP grands prix that Marquez has started at the Sachsenring that he failed to win.
He is third in the MotoGP standings, 56 points behind new leader Bagnaia.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
