Michael Scott | April 10, 2024
Cycle News In The Paddock
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MMaGA: Make Marquez Great Again
Hail to the chief. Wave the flags. Marc’s coming home. It’s not so much a case of MAGA as MMaGA (Make Marquez Great Again).
Forgive the flippancy. I’m not trying to trivialize any national memes. But domination is what happens when Marquez goes racing in the United States, making this potentially the weekend that he reminds his rivals exactly what he is made of and that he is ready to become unbeatable again on his new Ducati.
That’s what the statistics say, anyway, though there may be a few riders (and fans) with a different view. It will certainly focus the attention on the coming weekend at CotA.
For it marks a potential watershed. A crucial moment in the battle between enthusiasm and experience. The impetuous thrust of youth, led by new trainee superstar Pedro Acosta, versus the bulwark of hard-won wisdom and knowledge.
Marc Marquez not only showed he’s fast on the Ducati but also consistent.
Marquez is not quite the oldest rider on the grid. At 31, he’s the youngest of the four riders in their 30s, behind Aleix Espargaro (34), Johann Zarco (33), and Taka Nakagami (32). But with eight World Championships, he is the standard-bearer for the old guard.
Especially in the USA.
Marc’s U.S. stats encompass two out of three classes. He was a mere top-10 man on a 125. After that, in the two larger classes, they are dazzling.
They were also not only accrued at swoopy CotA. It seems that anywhere in the U.S. is really special for Marc. Probably Canada, too, if they had a GP.
It could be something to do with left-hand circuits, like the dirt ovals he trains on—most European circuits go the other way. But that really isn’t enough by itself to explain his prowess.
Marc won in MotoGP’s last and first visit to Laguna Seca in 2013, five times at Indianapolis, and was unbeaten in Moto2 and MotoGP between 2011 and the final Brickyard outing in 2015.
By then he’d already taken control in Texas. He was the first winner there in 2013 and repeated it through 2018, starting from pole every time. He was leading by miles in 2019, from pole again, when his Honda electronics threw a fit and tossed him off at the end of the long straight. It was an early warning of the bike’s increasingly uncertain temper.
There was no race in 2020, and Marc was, in any case, out of action with his broken arm. But he was back in 2021 and won again. Only in 2022 (he missed ’23 injured) was it different. His growing struggle with the bike and with his squiffy arm saw him qualify ninth; then he was left on the line with another electronic glitch. A mechanic had damaged an electronic sensor in an unfamiliar position on a changed swingarm. He was last away, finished lap one 18th, then battled back to sixth, sandwiched between Bagnaia and Quartararo, even though the bike wasn’t quite right all race long.
However, this invincibility is not necessarily unbreakable, and Marc is in an interesting position. In a satellite team, on a supposedly inferior bike, he is still working on adapting his style to the differing demands of Ducati. No easy task, as he has pointed out. Athletes approaching the end of their career, he explained, rely on muscle memory to compensate for an inevitable loss of vigor but is having to readjust all the reflexes polished on the Honda, on a bike that requires a quite different technique.
This at a time when a tsunami leads the much-feared tide of youth. Pedro Acosta, still just a teenager (he turns 20 on May 25), is so far making a sensationally fine fist of not just rivaling Marc’s own title-winning first MotoGP season but threatening to beat him for a second time this year. Despite less previous GP experience.
It makes this Americas GP a hugely important race for the former king, who has made a sporting but not yet devastating start to his post-Honda comeback. If he is going to reassert his dominance, this is the time to do it. Especially because of a perceived machine advantage of sorts. He has last year’s Ducati, and to say it is fully developed understates the case. It is certainly free from the chatter problems troubling Bagnaia and Co. on the 2024 bikes.
And Acosta, second-race podium notwithstanding, is still a beginner, his KTM/GasGas not quite the equal of last year’s Ducati.
Or is it? Or will Alex Rins, who beat Rossi here in 2019 and won last year, give Yamaha something to celebrate? Or even 2022 winner Bastianini?
The significance of this third race of a so-far fascinating season goes beyond the normal. Will Marc make his mark, or will this be the beginning of the always-inevitable end?
Can hardly wait to find out.CN
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