Márquez’s Aussie masterclass: “I don’t know what I did – I have to watch it again!”

Marc Márquez has now won three Grands Prix on a Ducati and all three of those victories were Márquez special victories: counterclockwise at Aragon and Phillip Island and at drizzly, windy Misano, because he is the king of the twists.

One of the six-time MotoGP champion’s greatest strengths is his ability to adapt instantly to changing situations, allowing him to take full advantage of the circumstances while his rivals are still trying to find the right rhythm.

How does he do that?

“I don’t know what I did – I need to watch it again!”

“I think one of the main reasons is the motocross training,” he told me a few years ago. “In motocross you can always race on the same track, but from the first run of the day to the last run of the day it is always a different track. I mean, every round is different, so you have to adapt! It’s the same with dirt track bikes: When you train with dirt track bikes, the route is different every time.”

On Sunday at Phillip Island, his race was – well, it seemed at the time – interrupted by a beetle that splashed into his sights during the warm-up lap. Just before the lights went out, he removed a piece of debris that the wind blew under his bike. He tried desperately to get it back, but the wind took it away again, the tear nestled between his rear tires and the road, so that when he released the clutch he was on ice and his takeoff was more like a rolling dragster start.

He moved from the front row into 13th place at Turn 1, then overtook seven riders before Turn 2 and briefly took sixth place ahead of Enea Bastianini at Turn 3. Like a knife through butter, he immediately adapted to a completely unexpected situation.

“When I got to the first corner I saw [Luca] Marini here, a couple of Yamahas, a lot of riders in front and I said, ‘I don’t know where I am,'” he laughed. “But after the second corner I was in sixth place, so I don’t know what I did – I’ll have to look at it again!”

Inevitably, the rolling burnout had raised the temperature of his rear tire, so he held steady in sixth place for a few laps and then began to move forward.

“In the first few laps the rear tire spun a lot and locked up a lot, but then it reached normal temperature and I started to ride well.”

Phillip Island (PI) is the fastest track in MotoGP – it is dominated by wide corners, many of which are approached with a lot of throttle, so tire wear can play a big role. But this year’s Michelin rear slick is so grippy – and the PI surface has been renewed – that the race was 51.7 seconds quicker than last year, a massive 1.9 seconds per lap. This is why the Australian GP was won and lost that year due to front tire wear.

With a third gap, championship leader Jorge Martin was almost nine tenths ahead of title rival Pecco Bagnaia, who was being chased by Márquez like a dog after a bone. But Martin had already used up most of his front tire. As Bagnaia and Márquez began to close the gap, he pushed too hard into Turn 1 on lap 12 and almost lost the lead.

“I almost crashed in the first corner and they caught me,” he said. “I had a lot of trouble with the front – by the fifth or sixth lap I started to struggle with the front on the right side.”

Reigning champion Bagnaia struggled to get his Ducati GP24 running all weekend. Windy conditions and downforce aerodynamics are a perfect combination, and Bagnaia needs perfect feel for the front to unlock his speed. This time he never found it and that ruined his race because he had to overuse his front tire to compensate for his bike’s poor cornering.

“I was struggling to get the bike into the corner and I felt like I was putting a lot of strain on the front tire,” he said. “After 15 laps [of 27] I was completely exhausted with the tire and to keep the same pace I tried to do it with the rear tire, but then I was completely exhausted with the rear tire and had complete problems in the last five laps.”