Thanks to some information collected here and there, we clearly mentioned the possibility in a previous article. Today, at a press conference, Marc Márquez completely confirmed our hypothesis, namely that his fall in Austin was not due to a driving error, but rather to an erratic malfunction of his Honda.
We therefore have every reason to believe that this comes from the electronics when downshifting from first gear... Or even probably that the same thing happened on the RC213V of Cal Crutchlow...
Marc Márquez : “regarding the fall, of course it was ultimately my fault since I fell. But during the weekend in Austin, I said over and over again that we had some little issues that we needed to resolve, and those little issues were there during the race. It's a track where there are these very strange corners in first gear, and it was the first time in the championship where we had these kinds of corners. We had a problem. For me, it was difficult to understand why I crashed because I was riding very well and very smoothly, and I didn't expect it. But after a complete analysis of my team, we understood that the fall came from something. I can't tell you what, but it came from something I wasn't expecting because it didn't happen every round. Some rounds yes, some rounds no. But they fixed that, and that’s the most important thing.”
Would the fall have occurred if you had been able to do FP3?
" No ! No, because in the end it was a fall, and this “little problem” had been there since Argentina. We expected something and we changed something for Austin. We thought we had it sorted there but that wasn't the case. But now they've already done some testing with it and it looks like it's fixed. It's important, but it's something that's normal because we're only in the third race of the championship, now in the 4th, the engine is new so it happens sometimes. But the most important thing is that after a mistake, after a 0 in the championship, we are only 9 points behind the first. So it's nothing: we're here! ".
Photo credit: MotoGP.com
