Frankie Carchedi’s season with Marc Marquez - EXCLUSIVE

Marc Marquez’s Gresini crew chief Frankie Carchedi is the special guest on this week’s Crash.net MotoGP podcast.

During a one-hour chat with host Jordan Moreland, Crash.net editor Pete McLaren and senior journalist Lewis Duncan, Carchedi gives an inside view on a season that saw Marquez - in his own words - ‘reborn’.

That includes ending a 1000-day MotoGP win drought at Aragon, before repeating the feat at Misano and Phillip Island, the only victories by a GP23 rider this year.

In the podcast, Carchedi discusses the media storm surrounding Marquez’s Ducati debut at the Valencia test, key moments of drama during the season, the victories, Marquez’s Gresini farewell and the arrival of 2025 rookie Fermin Aldeguer.

Here are just some of those talking points…

Which of the wins this year stands out the most for you Frankie?

Frankie Carchedi:
For a lot of reasons, maybe Misano, because it was a combination of things. The first was Marc's ability in those conditions, where there is no one even close, to put himself in the front.

The track was then dry for the second half of the race. And to finish ahead of Pecco and pull away on arguably his [Pecco's] best track showed that Marc could do it on a right-handed track with a fast right-hand corner.

Secondly, it showed how important starting at the front is. Because arguably, if it had not rained, even though he was the fastest rider on the track in the second half of the race in the dry, you can't do that pace [behind other riders]. It’s impossible. The tyres overheat. There's a lot of different circumstances.

It almost showed him as well. 'If I start at the front, then it's a very different race'. So for a lot of reasons, maybe Misano.

Martin made the mistake of pitting in that race. But there was some talk that Marc’s second bike had an issue in warm-up so he couldn’t have pitted anyway?

Frankie Carchedi:
We did have a technical issue with that bike. Something very strange happened when we warmed it up. We thought we resolved it and actually there was no problem with that bike in the next race.

However, on the grid, I basically said ‘Unless it rains hard don't come in!'

I also told him that the tyre pressure rules [don’t count] if you see white flags waved. You try and give the rider as much information as possible.

But yeah, I was quite clear that unless there was a thunderstorm, it was better to stay out! It worked out well!

What were you thinking when you saw the tear-off blown back under Marc’s rear wheel on the grid at Phillip Island?

Frankie Carchedi:
We picked it up on the live feed and we're like, ‘Oh, no!’ We'd just gone through a run [of bad luck] with things that will probably happen once in your whole career but seemed to happen every single race!

If you made a list of things that could go wrong, that [tear-off incident] probably wouldn’t even be in the top 100.

We were coming off the Red Bull Ring [tyre valve problem], the qualifying lap [late cancellation] in Motegi. There was never a normal weekend. So in a way it didn't surprise me that something happened in that one as well!

When Marc got the wins at Aragon and Misano, inside the team was there a feeling that ‘we can fight for the title’?

Frankie Carchedi:
Marc had his own goals. We had our own goals. In the future [at the factory Ducati team], I'm sure his goals will be different...

This season was more about understanding every aspect of the bike. Every rider, no matter who they are, has strengths, and weaknesses. Like I said, the most pleasing for me was the improvement in the fast right corners at the end of the year. 

At the start of the year, we were losing maybe three-four tenths in a corner! It was quite a lot. So to be that good [in the right handers] by the end, in an area that I'm sure he'll still say is his weakness... he's in a pretty good position for the future, put it that way!

How did he make that step in the right-handers?

Frankie Carchedi:
For sure we developed the bike [set-up] over the year. How much that helped and how much was Marc understanding how to get the best out of those kind of corners is difficult to say.

All I can say is that it's an area where we really struggled for at least the first half of the year. And the second-half of the year, we made massive, massive steps.

How did Marc ‘reset’ mentally after some of the setbacks in qualifying this year?

Frankie Carchedi:
I think he had a lot of faith in what we were doing and what we were trying to achieve. There was never any panic. Even at the start of the year, when we weren't in Q2, we were always able to get it right for Saturday and then go from there.

But if anything, I'd say probably his biggest quality - forget all the technical side and everything – is his mental approach. I've never seen anything even remotely close to how he is.

We’re always hearing other riders say they don’t understand how Marquez does some of the things he does on a bike. Was that your impression as well?

Frankie Carchedi:

I'm not saying we've quite reached the levels of Formula One, but you can't compare Verstappen with Russell for example because everyone’s in different cars.

So for us, it was always the other GP23s. That's a very fair comparison.

In fact, we almost achieved what we wanted until the last weekend. Because we finished as the first GP23 in every race we didn’t DNF until the [Barcelona] Sprint where Alex finished ahead of us. There's always a lot of banter between them!

But that was our number one target [top GP23]. Obviously, you always want more. You want to beat everyone else. But that's the realistic comparison.

Then what he does on the bike… I’ve laughed about it with Marc, especially in recent weeks. It’s taken me a long time to understand how he does the lefts, because he is on another level.

I've now understood what he does and how he does it – but whether you can explain it and someone else can do it is a different story! I'm sure other riders have seen his data and tried to replicate it.

But it's one thing understanding what he does and another thing replicating it!

Did you feel extra pressure coming into the season, with Marc needing to rebuild his career after such a difficult time?

Frankie Carchedi:
I would say the only time that I ever stood back and went ‘woah’ was probably Valencia [test, November 2023], when I arrived in the morning and there were literally about 200 people outside the box.

But to be honest, when you start working you forget about everything else. 
No matter who it is, you want to achieve the same thing, to finish as high up as possible.  

Yeah, there are aspects outside of the track. Social media, the cameras, that always make you think a little bit. But with everything going on at the track, I don't think you ever really had a moment to think about anything else...

Actually, maybe the very last race. But only because in every other race weekend we’d managed to produce a bike, even if it was by Saturday or Sunday, that he was happy with.

And that was the only race where, even after warm-up, things weren't quite right.

Fortunately, in the race, we managed to get something that he was happy with. It would have been a crying shame if he'd gone through the whole season and then the very last race he had something that wasn't working for him.

What was the feeling inside Gresini and Marc’s reaction after that last race?

Frankie Carchedi:
Just happiness and sadness at the same time. He took an unbelievable risk, working with people he had no idea about, in a team he had no idea about, on a bike that’s a year old.

The same from our side at Gresini. Yes, they signed an eight-time world champion! But there's always an element of risk in everything and I think the final feeling was of real happiness.

But sadness also because everybody has put a lot of work in, especially if a rider has never ridden for that manufacturer before… You get everything [as they like] and then before you know it, you're sort of starting again [with another rider]. So it's happiness and sadness at the same time.