Marc Marquez: "Victory came at a high price

Marc Marquez has once again overturned every prediction, returning to victory a month after the Le Mans injury and the subsequent double surgery. With the nine-time world champion, the impossible becomes possible, and he is once again the central contender for the MotoGP '27 title.

The Lenovo Ducati rider began the 2026 season with a string of crashes and an unnatural riding position. It was clear something was wrong with his right arm. The reason was that one of the screws used to fix a pre-existing fracture from the Indonesia incident had shifted, compressing the radial nerve while riding in MotoGP.

After the crash at the French GP, he underwent two operations on the same day: one for a foot fracture and another to remove two screws and a bone fragment from his shoulder. Back racing at Mugello, his condition still didn’t seem at its best, and he left Italy 102 points behind the championship leader, Marco Bezzecchi. For any other rider, that would have been a lost world championship. Instead, #93 proved he is not “just any rider.” At Balaton Park he secured pole position, and won both the Sprint and the Grand Prix. Combined with the multi-rider crash at Turn 1 involving Martin and Bezzecchi, his gap to the leader shrank to 72 points. Thirty points in a single weekend, where a total of 37 points are up for grabs.

The start was an absolute disaster. Marc Marquez launched superbly and was first into the bottleneck at Turn 1, while chaos erupted behind him. Jorge Martin made a glaring mistake by braking too late on his Aprilia, triggering a chain-reaction crash. It also involved his teammate and championship leader Marco Bezzecchi, as well as Fabio Di Giannantonio, Fermin Aldeguer, and Raul Fernandez.

With this situation unfolding, Pedro Acosta capitalized on the chaos to take the lead. The KTM rider began pushing hard, trying to break away on his own. He managed to gain a second and a half on Marquez, who chose to take it easy in the opening laps—a strategy that proved decisive for the win, both physically and in terms of tire management. Together with his technical crew, he gambled on the medium rear tire instead of the soft. That cost him early on, but later paid off, and he once again won the duel with Pedro Acosta, his future teammate.

Marc Marquez managed the race until halfway; on lap 15 came the turning point. The two riders touched in a clean overtake, and a lap later the reigning MotoGP champion consolidated his advantage, heading toward a victory that ended a 266-day drought. "I expected to feel worse on this circuit, but I think the key was rationing my energy on Friday, without pushing too hard."

This victory is an extraordinary reward after an ordeal of surgeries and doubts that would have pushed anyone else to retire. "It’s a victory we paid a high price for, but it was worth it. The price? I had two surgeries, spent many hours on the operating table. I don’t laugh about it because it’s tough, but you have to face it with optimism, especially since it wasn’t the first time. Mentally it’s very demanding, more than physically, but then, when you live these moments, the reward comes."

Better to keep our feet on the ground, because the next tracks, Brno and Assen, will be much more demanding physically. Right-hand corners remain his Achilles’ heel, and in that respect Balaton Park, with a predominance of left-handers, helped the Cervera phenomenon quite a bit. Marc Marquez will continue working with his physiotherapist, and then comes the summer break. "In such a long championship, anything can happen. Right now I’m not in the condition for a comeback," concluded the Ducati rider.

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