Márquez’s Aussie masterclass: ‘I don’t know what I did – I need to rewatch!’

Marc Márquez has now won three grands prix on a Ducati and all three of those victories have been Márquez specials: at anti-clockwise Aragon and Phillip Island and at drizzly, sketchy Misano, because he’s the king of sketchy.

One of the six-time MotoGP champion’s greatest strengths is his ability to immediately adapt to changing situations, so he can fully exploit the circumstances, while his rivals are still trying to find the groove.

How does he do this?

“I don’t know what I did – I need to rewatch!”

“I think one of the main reasons is motocross training,” he told me a few years ago. “In motocross you can ride the same circuit all the time, but from the first run of the day to the last run of the day it’s always a different circuit. I mean, every lap is different, so you need to adapt! It’s the same with dirt-track bikes: if you train with dirt-track bikes, the track is different every time.”

At Phillip Island on Sunday his race was derailed – well, it seemed so at the time – by a bug that splattered into his visor during the warm-up lap. Moments before the lights went out he removed a tear-off, which the wind blew beneath his bike. He frantically tried to retrieve it but the wind took it again, the tear-off nestling between his rear tyre and the road, so when he dumped the clutch he was on ice and his start was more like a rolling-burnout dragster start.

He went from the front row to 13th at Turn 1, then passed seven riders before Turn 2 and briefly took sixth from Enea Bastianini at Turn 3. Like a knife through butter – immediately adapting to an entirely unexpected situation.

“When I arrived at the first corner I saw [Luca] Marini here, some Yamahas, a lot of riders in front and I said, ‘I don’t know where I am’,” he laughed “But then after the second corner I was in sixth position, so I don’t know what I did – I need to rewatch!”

Inevitably the rolling burnout had spiked his rear-tyre’s temperature, so he stayed steady in sixth place for a few laps, then started moving forward.

“On the first laps the rear tyre was spinning and locking a lot but then it came to normal temperature and I started to ride in a good way.”

Phillip Island (PI) is MotoGP’s fastest track – dominated by sweeping corners, many of them attacked with a big handful of throttle, so tyre wear can be a big deal. But this year’s Michelin rear slick is so grippy – plus PI had been resurfaced – that the race was 51.7 seconds faster than last year’s, a massive 1.9 seconds a lap. That’s why this year’s Australian GP was won and lost through front-tyre wear.

By one-third distance championship leader Jorge Martin was almost nine-tenths out front, ahead of title rival Pecco Bagnaia, who had Márquez chasing him down like a dog after a bone. But Martin had already used most of his front tyre. When Bagnaia and Márquez began to close the gap he pushed too hard into Turn 1 on lap 12 and nearly lost the front.

“I almost crashed at the first corner and they caught me,” he said. “I was struggling a lot with the front – from lap five or six I started to struggle with the front on the right side.”

Reigning champ Bagnaia had struggled all weekend to get his Ducati GP24 turned. Windy conditions and downforce aero are a match made in hell and Bagnaia requires a perfect feeling with the front to unleash his speed. This time he never found it and that destroyed his race, because he had to overuse his front tyre to compensate for his bike’s poor turning.

“I was struggling to make the bike turn and I started to feel I was forcing the front tyre a lot,” he said. “After 15 laps [of 27] I completely finished the tyre and to remain at the same pace I tried to do it with the rear tyre, but then I finished the rear and was completely in trouble for the last five laps.”