It was a weekend to forget for Alex Márquez at Motegi, where the Ducati rider crashed twice in the space of a single day – first in the warm-up and then during the Japanese Grand Prix. According to the Spanish rider himself, the cause was the same on both occasions: a mistake when using his foot on the gearshift.
“Instead of dropping a gear going into the corner, I shifted up a gear,” Alex Márquez explained to the press after the race, clearly describing the sequence of events leading to the crash that cost him dearly in terms of points and morale. A mechanical error – almost a reflex gone wrong – which occurred not once but twice in the same weekend, a fact that surprised the rider himself more than he had anticipated.
“These are mistakes I can’t afford to make,” admitted Marc Márquez’s younger brother candidly, aware that in a championship as closely contested as the current one, every crash results in precious points lost in the battle for the top positions. The 2024 MotoGP season has shown just how narrow the margins are between the top riders, and mistakes of this kind risk jeopardising entire seasons.
Apart from the crashes, the Japanese weekend also provided further food for thought on a technical level. Alex Márquez expressed surprise at the behaviour of the hard Michelin tyre, which performed differently to expectations on the Motegi circuit. The characteristics of the Japanese tarmac, combined with the temperatures and the specific stresses of the circuit, made managing the harder compound a key element in race strategy, with its behaviour catching more than one rider on the grid off guard.
For the Ducati team, which is counting on Alex Márquez to be one of the season’s key riders, the incident at Motegi serves as a wake-up call that should not be underestimated. Technical errors, especially those linked to almost automatic actions such as downshifting, can be a sign of mental or physical fatigue that builds up over the course of an intense weekend, comprising free practice, qualifying and the race.
The team will now have to work on analysing the dynamics of the incidents in detail, seeking to understand whether it was simply a case of distraction or whether there are more structural factors that need to be addressed ahead of the upcoming races on the calendar. For Alex Márquez, the challenge will be to turn this negative experience into an opportunity for growth, ensuring that a mistake – which, as he himself has emphasised, he can no longer afford to make if he wants to compete at the highest level in the World Championship – is not repeated in future.
Written by Fabio Averna
Article produced by the AiSportNews newsroom with the support of artificial intelligence tools.