Assen MotoGP: Márquez tastes gravel and champagne

Last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix celebrated one hundred years of racing motorcycles around Assen. Much of the talk concerned the difficulty of overtaking around this unique MotoGP circuit, which was fitting, since the very first Assen racetrack – a 17-mile triangle of public roads linking the villages of Rolde, Borger and Schoonlo – included a bridge so narrow that riders could only cross it one at a time.

A battered and bruised but relentless Marc Márquez won the centenary Dutch GP not because he was the fastest rider around today’s sinuous 2.8-mile layout but because he got into the lead – where his front tyre could enjoy the cooling breeze – and then focused on defending his position.

Assen is unique because its layout is reminiscent of old street circuits, which zigzagged through the countryside, so unlike most 21st-century racetracks. Therefore each Assen corner leads into the next, so there’s no room to get alongside rivals in a straight line and pass them into the next corner.

The secret to defending position at Assen is understanding where you may be vulnerable to an overtake and then applying a strategy through the preceding twists and turns to make that overtake impossible.

That’s exactly what Márquez senior did last weekend.

Assen’s most famous overtaking spot is the final chicane, scene of so many unforgettable last-lap battles. But the best way to win the final chicane battle isn’t at the final chicane.

Márquez made himself impossible to attack there by focusing on the preceding high-speed lefts – Turns 14 and 15 – where he used his killer speed through left-handers to build a gap that couldn’t be undone braking into the chicane.

And not only that. Building that buffer saved him using a defensive line into the chicane, so he could take a slightly wider entry to give himself a better exit speed onto the start/finish, which also made him invulnerable into Turn 1.

He used tricks like that all around the circuit, always knowing where to attack, to build gaps, and where to defend.

Márquez’s current performance stats make grim reading for anyone with a view to bettering the 32-year-old Spaniard.

His Assen sprint/grand prix double made him the first rider to score a full house of weekend points at three consecutive GPs since the introduction of sprints in 2023. And the fact that two of those full houses came at Mugello and Assen – two of his weaker tracks – will only cause his rivals to shrug their shoulders again.

This was also the first time Márquez had won three GPs in a row since 2019, when he was at the peak of his powers. He is no longer at the peak of his powers physically, because his mangled right arm still isn’t right and most likely never will be, so he always has to work around that.

After ten of 22 races he stands on 307 points. At the same stage of last year’s championship, Jorge Martin led the way on 241 points, while Pecco Bagnaia had 251 when he led the 2023 series after ten rounds.

Márquez’s 68th MotoGP win also puts him second equal in the all-time winner’s league with 1960s and 1970s legend Giacomo Agostini. Only Valentino Rossi lies ahead – 11 victories to equal his bitterest of rivals, 12 to better him.

Márquez is basically steamrolling everything at the moment – his rivals and the record books.

And yet there is no inevitability about this. Márquez may have won eight world titles through speed and consistency but he’s still more than capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

At Mugello the previous Sunday his fellow Ducati GP25 rider Fabio Di Giannantonio said his end-of-race attack on Márquez’s factory team-mate Pecco Bagnaia had been a do-or-die effort; “champagne or gravel.”

At Assen, Márquez had both. Two high-speed trips into the gravel, which left him stiff and sore, with a bloodied, stitched-up chin. He was so battered that when he woke up Sunday morning he wasn’t even sure he could race. Nevertheless, on Sunday afternoon, after 90 minutes of pre-race physio, he got to sip from his second bottle of winner’s champagne. (Okay, it’s prosecco).

Those Friday crashes were proof that Márquez has no off-switch. He’s told us before that he’s only got one speed – as fast as he can go – even when he’s at home, doing motocross with mates.

And even when he knows he’s dealing with dangerous race tracks. Going into the Mugello weekend he told us how he really didn’t want to crash there, because, “You arrive with a lot of speed in the gravel – dangerous”. Assen is the same, only worse.

Both his Dutch tumbles came over 100mph, at corners where many riders have been badly hurt over the years, so he was lucky he didn’t put himself out for a race or two.