Repsol Honda Team’s Marc Marquez has held his hands up and apologised to his team for crashing out of the lead in today’s 27-lap Australian Grand Prix, admitting that he simply pushed too hard under braking for Turn 4.
The Spaniard has been in a class of his own this weekend. In qualifying he braved a switch to slick tyres and reaped the rewards, snatching pole by almost eight tenths of a second. In this morning’s warm up session, Marquez went even quicker than he did in qualifying and displayed some pretty ominous long run pace.
In the race, he briefly lost the lead to Tech 3 Yamaha’s Pol Espargaro but snatched it back at Turn 4 on the opening lap. Once at the front, the Spaniard began checking out and was steadily increasing his gap over second place. At one stage, Marquez was a second a lap quicker than the rest of the field and well on his way to victory.
However, on the 10th lap of 27, the Spaniard braked just a fraction too late into Turn 4 and tucked the front-end. He says that he tried to get the bike to the apex rather than backing out, something he has grown accustomed to doing this year when his RC213V has not been behaving. He couldn’t save it and smashed his Honda to bits as a result, spelling his first DNF of the season.
Twitter: #MM93 IS DOWN!
The leader of the #AustralianGP has crashed out!!
#CC35 LEADS! https://t.co/sv8ka5A1w6 (@MotoGP)
There was some concern that Marquez’ crash was a carbon copy of his 2014 spill at Turn 10, a compound too hard for Phillip Island’s unpredictable temperatures. Though Marquez was on the hard front, he was quick to quash any speculation that his tyre was to blame and admitted that it was nothing more than an error on his part.
In the grand scheme of things, this DNF doesn’t mean anything to the Spaniard as he is already World Champion. Nonetheless, he still wants to end the season with as many victories as possible and is left somewhat disappointed by this result.
“First of all I want to say sorry to my team because I made a mistake today. We were doing everything perfectly, and we were just missing capping it with a result on Sunday,” said Marquez.
“If I had been fighting for the title it would’ve been an entirely different race, as I wouldn’t have risked so much. Today I started strong because I knew I had to make a difference at the beginning. I was maintaining the distance, but at one of the hard braking points I braked too late and instead of taking a wider line, which is what I had been doing throughout the year, I tried to keep going. In such cases the limit is a fine one. We remain happy of course because we had already won the title but of course we wanted to win more races.
“It was completely my mistake; during the whole season I’ve been very careful on the braking points and this time I risked more so this crash has nothing to do with the Michelin tyres. Now we have another race next week, and we’ll just think about that. Congratulations to Cal for his great victory”.
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