Marco Bezzecchi
Marc Marquez is set to return to action at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix with renewed hope of winning the MotoGP world championship.
On Tuesday, Ducati confirmed that Marquez will race at Mugello as long as he passes a medical check on Thursday. The reigning champion sat out the main race at Le Mans and the entire Catalan GP weekend.
He enters this weekend ninth in the championship, 85 points behind the leader, Marco Bezzecchi. While he has won seven premier-class titles, Marquez has never come back from a deficit larger than 37.
How do you expect Marc Marquez to fare if he returns at the Italian GP?
Marc Marquez believes Aprilia’s dominance has ‘diminished’
Speaking ahead of the French GP, Marquez said he couldn’t ‘think about’ winning the title because of his results on Sundays. He had picked up two Sprint wins but hadn’t scored a podium over a full race distance.
However, the sofa-bound Marquez watched Aprilia struggle last time out. Marco Bezzecchi salvaged fourth place from an incident-packed race but lacked speed, as demonstrated by his P12 qualifying result.
Jorge Martin was faster but didn’t collect a single point from the race weekend after a series of crashes. It was arguably a missed opportunity for the Aprilia pair to knock Marquez out of the picture for good.
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According to El Periodico journalist Emilio Perez de Rozas, who is close to the Marquez family, the #93 is ‘convinced’ he can still ‘put up a fight’ to win the world championship. He saw ‘the power of Aprilia diminished’ as Fabio Di Giannantonio led a Ducati one-two-three.
After successful surgery, he has ‘almost fully recovered’ from his shoulder injury. The screw that was pressing on his radial nerve, effectively leaving him with ‘one and a half arms’ (in his own words), has now been properly aligned.
He has subjected his shoulder to increasing loads during training, and it has held up. That gives him confidence that he’s ready to make a comeback now, rather than waiting until Hungary, as some predicted.
Having discovered the explanation for his out-of-sorts performances, Marquez arrives at Mugello with no ‘bad thoughts’ in his mind. There are still 16 races to go and 592 points available, but his margin for error is clearly slim from here.
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