Davide Tardozzi responds to Marc Marquez “mistake” theory
The Ducati boss has responded to the idea that Marc Marquez’s tyre pressure was mistakenly set too low in the Thai MotoGP.
Factory Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi has responded to the suggestion that Marc Marquez’s front tyre pressure was set too low in Sunday’s MotoGP Thai Grand Prix as a result of a mistake.
The idea that a mistake led to Marquez’s front tyre pressure worry – that saw him drop from the lead to second place in Sunday’s Thai Grand Prix as he tried to increase his pressure for legality reasons – was caused by a mistake from the Ducati Lenovo Team in calculating Marquez’s front pressure for the race was suggested by TNT Sports MotoGP analyst Michael Laverty.
The former MotoGP rider and BSB race winner said that it was possible that Marquez’s team saw the ambient temperature dropping ahead of the race, and calculated their pressure based on that reduced temperature; but they ultimately set the pressure too low as a result.
Davide Tardozzi responds to theory about Marc Marquez
Tardozzi, though, told TNT Sports on Sunday that it was not correct to make assumptions without having first checked the data from Marquez’s bike.
“Honestly, we have to download the data and see what happened,” he said, “because we [suspected that Marc Marquez would be in front], but we don’t know exactly the numbers.”
He added: “I think that our engineers are always calculating very well the numbers of the temperature.
“But in the end we have to see the data, because speaking without knowing what happened is not good.”
Tardozzi admitted that Marquez’s sudden drop in speed as he fell behind Gresini’s Alex Marquez had him nervous.
“He slowed down in a strange way, because he could slow down in a different way,” he said.
“But my heart was [at 200bpm]; but immediately, when in turn five he was behind Alex in a normal way, I understood [what was happening].”
He said that the race playing out as it did actually proved the eight-time World Champion’s superiority on the weekend.
“In the end, he’s a clever guy,” Tardozzi said, “and he stayed behind Alex [Marquez] and didn’t push like he did in lap 23, when he made a huge gap in one split, half-a-second in one split.
“That means that Marc [Marquez] was really able to pull away since the beginning.”
Alex joined the Crash.net team in August of 2024 having covered consumer and racing motorcycle news at Visordown for two years.
