Marc Marquez has suffered a relapse of Diplopia, forcing him to miss the final race of the 2021 MotoGP season and putting his participation in the Argentine Grand Prix in jeopardy.
Marc Marquez has taken the next step in his recovery from injury by riding Honda RC213V-S at Portimao.
Marc Marquez will miss the start of the 2022 MotoGP season due to his continued recovery from his current injury, according to Honda.
Pol Espargaro will be the Repsol Honda Team’s sole rider in this weekend’s MotoGP season finale at Valencia, as Marc Marquez remains sidelined. Then, it was Honda test rider Stefan Bradl who filled the breach, as he had done when #93 missed most of last season and the first two rounds of 2021 due to his badly broken arm. However, the German has not been called up this time around, meaning only #44 will be in the garage at the Valencia Grand Prix. “On Tuesday it was announced that Marc Marquez will miss both the Valencia GP and the Jerez Test due to diplopia after a training crash,” read the works Honda team’s pre-event press release, in part. “The Repsol Honda Team have elected not to field a replacement for the Valencia GP weekend.” Espargaro, who moved across from KTM in the last off-season, is enjoying his best run of form to results with Honda. The Spaniard has five top 10 finishes in the last six races, including his first podium on an RC213V at Misano, two rounds ago, and is hoping to continue that form. “First I want to wish Marc all the best during this difficult time and I hope he can recover soon and well,” said Espargaro. “His absence will of course be felt at the track, but we arrive in Valencia still motivated to do our job the best we can. “It’s a circuit that I really enjoy a lot, I achieved my first MotoGP podium there in 2018 and I think we can do well there this year. “The circuit is very cold at this time of year and this is good for us. It’s the last race, I want to continue the speed from the last races to end well before 2022 begins in Jerez.” Marquez will also miss the post-season test which takes place at Jerez on November 18-19.
Marc Marquez’s MotoGP season is over after he was ruled out of this weekend’s Valencia Grand Prix and the Jerez test which follows due to ongoing vision problems. The six-time premier class champion missed last weekend’s Algarve Grand Prix after a training crash left him with concussion. Despite resting at home for a week now, he continued to feel unwell and suffer from vision problems. Yesterday (Monday, local time), he was visited by ophthalmologist Dr Sánchez Dalmau at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, who examined him. Tests picked up a new episode of diplopia, otherwise known as double vision, and he will not ride a MotoGP bike again this year. “The examination carried out on Marc Marquez today after the accident that occurred has confirmed that the rider has diplopia and has revealed a paralysis of the fourth right nerve with involvement of the right superior oblique muscle,” said Dr Dalmau. “A conservative treatment with periodic updates has been chosen to follow with the clinical evolution. “This fourth right nerve is the one that was already injured in 2011.” Marquez suffered from vertical diplopia in 2011 after a crash in a Moto2 session at Sepang left him with paralysis of that same muscle due to trauma to the fourth right cranial nerve. The latest injury means he will have missed a total of four rounds by season’s end, having sat out the first two as he continued to recover from the bad arm facture which he suffered in Jerez last year. Nevertheless, he is currently sixth in the standings, edging Brad Binder on a countback, and cannot finish any worse than seventh, meaning he will be the top Honda rider for 2021. Marquez has scored three wins this year, including two in what have ended up being his last two starts of the campaign. There is no word yet on a replacement but it is highly likely that Honda test rider Stefan Bradl will fill in again, given he has done so on the other three occasions. Practice at Valencia begins on Friday, while the Jerez post-season test takes place on November 18-19.
Honda MotoGP test rider Stefan Bradl will once again return to MotoGP action this weekend at the Algarve Grand Prix, stepping into the Repsol Honda team to repeat his now regular role as the replacement for the injured Marc Marquez. It was announced yesterday that the Spaniard will sit out this weekend’s race at Portimao after sustaining a concussion last Saturday while training on an off-road machine, but no substitute was confirmed when the team first released a brief statement on the eight-time world champion’s injuries. However, it’s now been made official that Bradl, who has tested extensively of late for the Japanese manufacturer, will park his microphone from his normal weekend role as a TV pundit for German broadcaster Servus and will instead replace Marquez. “First of all I hope Marc is recovering well and he can be back on track soon,” the 31-year-old said in a team press release. “I am looking forward to riding again as Portimao is an enjoyable circuit where we had a good result towards the end of 2020. It’s never easy to jump on the bike, but we have had a lot of good bike time this year between the races and testing.” Bradl’s return to the team is a familiar one considering it marks his fifth appearance of the season for Honda after first deputising for Marquez at the opening two races of the year in Qatar before going on to make two wildcard appearances in his role as test rider.
Marc Marquez’s hot run of form will be interrupted after being ruled out of the Algarve Grand Prix this weekend following a training accident. The Portuguese circuit will host the penultimate round of the MotoGP season, where Marquez would have been vying for three wins on the trot having taken victory in both the Grand Prix of the Americas and the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix last month. However, Honda has confirmed the 28-year-old will be sidelined as recovers from a crash last weekend. “This past Saturday Marc Marquez, while preparing for the Algarve Grand Prix with one of his standard off-road training sessions, suffered a fall that caused a slight head concussion,” read a statement from the Honda Racing Corporation. “After a few days of rest at home and seeing that he was still unwell, today Marquez has been assessed by doctors in a medical check-up to evaluate his current status. “As a precautionary measure, this coming weekend Marquez will not contest the Algarve Grand Prix.” It’s unclear whether Marquez will be replaced for this weekend. The concussion represents the latest hurdle for the six-time premier class world champion, who endured a long road back from the broken humerus he suffered in his right arm in July, 2020. Marquez has often spoken of the pain he still has to manage, although his results had improved considerably of late. Having often been relatively on the pace since returning for Round 3 of the season – ironically also at Portugal – Marquez’s first half of the campaign was littered with in-race crashes. He broke through for a grand prix victory at his German stronghold, the anti-clockwise Sachsenring – but that remained his only top five result in his first 10 races back. The last four events have been far more fruitful, with second at Aragon and fourth at San Marino preceding his back-to-back wins in October. Marquez currently holds sixth in the standings, seven points behind Jack Miller (Ducati Lenovo Team) and six ahead of Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing).
six-time MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez tallied up his third win of the 2021 season after inheriting victory when long-time leader Francesco Bagnaia crashed out on lap 23, ending his title hopes. Marquez had shadowed Bagnaia for most of the race, piling the pressure on him as he did at Aragon last month, but had just conceded defeat when the Ducati rider crashed. The Honda rider was left to lead the first factory Honda 1-2 since Aragon 2017, and to claim his first win on a clockwise circuit since Japan 2019. Marquez has been limited by the physical condition of his recovering right shoulder in 2021, but says the fact much of the weekend was affected by rain meant he came into Sunday’s Misano race feeling “fresh”. “This year I realised the qualifying practice is not my best point, or my strongest point, so then I started to focus a lot on the starts,” Marquez said after starting from seventh. “I started really good, really fast, from seventh to third in the first lap because I knew both Ducati riders will push from the beginning. “In fact, when I saw the laptime in the beginning was 1m32.2s, I say ‘OK, what’s going on here’ because yesterday I was struggling to do 1m33.8s. “But today the feeling was there, the bike was working good. “Especially also the last laps, the distance between me and the others was very big and it’s something also that is important because in the end to have this margin, I was able to ride in a good way because in the last laps I was struggling a bit with my physical condition. “But the fact that all weekend was in wet conditions, [this] gave me the chance to have the first Sunday where I arrived [to the race] fresh to ride with energy. “When I woke up I said ‘OK, I feel the arm is there, I have power’.”
