It was a wretched weekend at Motegi for Alex Marquez, as Motorsport.com reports, leaving the Gresini rider without a single point to show for his efforts. The Spaniard walked away from the Japanese Grand Prix empty-handed in what marked his worst showing since the season opener in Thailand.
The troubles for the Gresini Racing machine started early during Saturday's sprint. A misjudgement under braking at Turn 3 saw him take out both Pedro Acosta and Fabio di Giannantonio, earning a double long lap penalty for the grand prix itself. Even after serving those penalty loops, the 30-year-old was fighting hard in eighth place before his race came to a premature halt on lap 19.
That grand prix exit was actually his second fall of Sunday, following an earlier crash in the extended warm-up session on the hard tyre, bringing his total for the weekend to three. The root cause of both Sunday incidents, by his own admission, was a bizarre gear-shifting error that left the bike two gears higher than required for Turn 11. Instead of clicking down, he inadvertently went up. With the machine heavily leaned over, the sudden mismatch in gear pushed the bike and spat him onto the tarmac. When trying to select second gear, his size 44 foot pressed the lever into fourth instead.
“Today, I made the same mistake in two sessions, the warm-up and the race,” he admitted to DAZN, calling the errors unacceptable for a rider at this level. The front end locks up when you botch a shift at high lean angles, leaving him furious with himself.
Friday had offered a completely different outlook when the younger Marquez topped the main practice session, showing genuine speed. While his brother Marc Marquez took victory on the factory Ducati, the Gresini rider insisted that missing out on a strong result hurts regardless of where you might have finished. The raw pace was there, but repeating such a fundamental mistake twice in one day overshadowed the speed.
Beyond his own cockpit dramas, Marquez took aim at the inconsistency of the penalty system. He called for MotoGP to standardise long lap sections across the calendar, pointing out that the loop at Motegi costs an immense amount of time compared to venues like Brno. Criticizing the presence of bumps, potholes, and drainage grates on certain layouts, he urged the championship to look into fairer, track-integrated solutions that riders can actually debate with officials.
