Marco Bezzecchi
Marc Marquez’s mother has emphatically rejected any suggestions that her son is ‘finished’ despite his difficult start to the 2026 MotoGP season.
Marquez crashed out of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix on the second lap, a result that leaves him 44 points behind championship leader Marco Bezzecchi. He has never come back from a deficit larger than 37.
Excluding his last four years at Honda, all of which were affected by injury, it’s his worst start to a season in the premier class. He has won two Sprint races but hasn’t scored a Grand Prix podium.
Marc Marquez has never come back from a deficit larger than 37 points
With the gap to Marco Bezzecchi now 44, are his title hopes over?
Marc Marquez’s rivals will also ‘make mistakes’, his mother says
Marquez is the second-oldest rider on the MotoGP grid at 33 and, by the end of this year, he will be in the top five of all time for premier-class starts.
Since the start of 2020, Marquez has undergone five major surgeries, four on his arm and one on his shoulder. The season-ending injury he sustained at last year’s Indonesian GP still appears to be bothering him.
But his mother, Roser Alenta, is adamant that he hasn’t entered a decline. She expects his rivals to make mistakes later in the season.
Is all the pressure off Marc Marquez this year?
“Look, Marc isn’t finished,” she told AS. “He’s still there. People are making things up, but he does what he has to do. What do you think? That the others won’t make mistakes?”
Bezzecchi has already had three high-profile crashes this season, but all of these have been on Saturdays. He has picked up 95 of the 100 points available in full-length races.
What Jorge Lorenzo and Pedro Acosta have said about Marc Marquez’s slump
Marco Melandri believes Marquez won’t improve physically as the season goes on. It has now been almost six months since his Indonesia crash and he still hasn’t made a full recovery.
Indeed, Jorge Lorenzo says Marquez continues to make unusual ‘arm gestures’, a clear sign of his lingering discomfort.
The messages from the rider himself have been mixed. At times, he has eschewed any excuses, but he has also admitted that his shoulder is compromising his riding.
Pedro Acosta says Marquez’s drop-off is ‘not normal’ and thinks he has to change his riding style, moving away from the approach that comes naturally.
VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio, who is surprisingly the lead Ducati in the world championship, says Marquez has been unlucky this year, with various incidents denying him a representative points tally.
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