{"id":892037,"date":"2026-09-14T19:58:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T19:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/892037\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T19:58:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T19:58:15","slug":"misano-motogp-marquez-back-in-machine-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/892037\/","title":{"rendered":"Misano MotoGP: M\u00e1rquez back in machine mode"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Marc M\u00e1rquez<\/a> wins the 2026 MotoGP<\/a> world championship, many will look back at Misano<\/a> as the turning point, the moment the reigning champion took the points lead for the first time, while his strongest rivals buckled, Marco Bezzecchi<\/a> ending his weekend in a gravel trap, Jorge Martin<\/a> undone by arm pump.<\/p>\n

Especially because Misano<\/a> wasn\u2019t supposed to end like that: this was supposed to be Bezzecchi\u2019s weekend, because Misano is the Italian\u2019s home track, where he trains with his VR46 buddies, so he knows every ripple and bump.<\/p>\n

And Aprilia<\/a>\u2019s too, because Bezzecchi beat M\u00e1rquez in last year\u2019s Misano<\/a> sprint and came within six tenths of beating him in the Sunday race, at a time when the RS-GP was weaker than it is now and M\u00e1rquez was stronger than now.<\/p>\n

But Misano wasn\u2019t the turning point in this latest miraculous M\u00e1rquez comeback. The real turning point came back in May, when M\u00e1rquez crashed out of the Le Mans<\/a> sprint and headed home for yet more surgery on his mangled right arm, specifically to remove a couple of loose screws that were pressing on the radial nerve, numbing the arm. Not what you want aboard a 225mph motorcycle.<\/p>\n

M\u00e1rquez scored just 71 points from the first seven races, before he went under the knife, and has amassed 203 from the last seven. During those same seven races, Martin has been his closest rival, on 118 points, while Bezzecchi has amassed 68, a third of M\u00e1rquez\u2019s score.<\/p>\n

This would be impressive if his most recent surgery had fixed his arm, but of course it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right arm is very limited in strength; especially in the biceps,\u201d M\u00e1rquez\u2019s surgeon Dr Samuel Antuna revealed last week during an interview with El Peri\u00f3dico de Catalunya. \u201cI would say the arm is around 50% of its capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

So M\u00e1rquez is effectively riding with one and a half arms.<\/p>\n

\"Bezzecchi<\/p>\n

Bezzecchi leads the charge on lap one. Seven corners later he was out of the race, making M\u00e1rquez and Martin the title favourites<\/p>\n

\n Michelin\n <\/p>\n

When he got hurt last October, the injury didn\u2019t seem serious: torn ligaments and a fractured coracoid, a tiny part of the shoulder blade. But in fact the coracoid is hugely important, because it\u2019s an anchor point for numerous muscles and tendons.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the Indonesia accident, the whole arm injury was very well compensated,\u201d continued Antuna. \u201cMarc wasn\u2019t perfect, but he was fine. After that mishap, he became decomposed\u2026 If he were Carlos Alcaraz (world number three in tennis), he would have had to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is why M\u00e1rquez is a different rider now. Back in the old days he took risks for kicks \u2013 \u201cYeah, yeah \u2013 it\u2019s an addiction!\u201d \u2013 but in recent years, especially since last October, he only tempts fate when he absolutely needs to.<\/p>\n

All weekend at Misano he was millimetre perfect, barely a wheel out of line over the three days. During qualifying \u2013 when he needed to risk it to ensure a front-row start \u2013 he broke Ducati\u2019s lean-angle record, reaching 65 degrees at Turn 8, then got a bit loose into the next corner, so he immediately admitted defeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave up,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are still many races.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was the same in the sprint, only pushing when runner-up Bezzecchi seemed like a threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am trying to manage the risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pole-sitter Bezzecchi ended the sprint a second down on M\u00e1rquez but didn\u2019t manage the risk so well on Sunday. Beaten into the first corner by M\u00e1rquez on Saturday, he made sure that didn\u2019t happen again the next day, but pushed too hard too soon, crashing at speed at Turn 13.<\/p>\n

\"Marc<\/p>\n

Last week Marquez published this photo on Instagram, to show the lingering damage to his right arm and shoulder, from multiple injuries and seven surgeries over the past seven years<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure when you have a full fuel tank, you have to manage a little bit better the braking point,\u201d Bezzecchi explained. \u201cI had a bit of shaking in the fast part [Turns 11 and 12], so when I braked I didn\u2019t close perfectly the line and unfortunately I lost the front.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what would\u2019ve happened if Bezzecchi hadn\u2019t made that almighty mistake, but afterwards M\u00e1rquez admitted that the crucial factor in his fifth victory of 2026 was the Aprilia rider\u2019s exit.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, this year\u2019s Misano race was a significant three-tenths a lap faster than last year\u2019s, so he wasn\u2019t hanging about, because younger brother Alex was faster once he had taken second place from Pedro Acosta<\/a>, closing the gap from 2.4 seconds on lap four of 27 to fourth-tenths on lap 22. During the last few laps M\u00e1rquez the elder upped his pace to finish sixth-tenths ahead.<\/p>\n

Of course, M\u00e1rquez may well have lost the race to Martin aboard the surviving factory Aprilia. The RS-GP and Ducati\u2019s Desmosedici may have been equally matched around most of Misano, but the Aprilia had a real advantage through the most important third sector, which includes Misano\u2019s three fastest corners, including Curvone, the fastest corner in the championship.<\/p>\n

The efficiency of downforce and ground-effect aerodynamics increase massively with speed. To be exact, a MotoGP bike benefits from four times as much downforce through the 160mph Curvone as through the 80mph Turn 3, creating a massive increase in grip. And because the Aprilia\u2019s downforce aero works better than the Ducati\u2019s, the RS-GP had a quarter of a second on the Desmosedici through that sector.<\/p>\n

M\u00e1rquez didn\u2019t know it at the time, but Martin\u2019s victory challenge \u2013 he came through from the second row to lead from lap seven to 11 \u2013 wasn\u2019t ended by the 2024 champ burning up his tyres, but by that dreaded racer\u2019s curse, which may derail his title challenge\u2026<\/p>\n

\"MotoGP\u2019s<\/p>\n

MotoGP\u2019s young lions Aldeguer and Acosta (37) set the fastest and second-fastest laps of the race as they battled for third<\/p>\n

\n MotoGP\n <\/p>\n

\u201cI started in a great way and I thought Marc was going to pull away,\u201d said Martin, who may undergo arm-pump surgery following this weekend\u2019s Austrian GP. \u201cBut then I was catching him again and I went into the lead. After that, I wasn\u2019t pushing like crazy and I was still pulling away. But then I started to have issues with braking and opening the throttle and every lap was worse and worse. At the end I couldn\u2019t do anything. I was completely not in control of the bike.\u201d<\/p>\n

That made Martin easy prey for the M\u00e1rquez brothers and MotoGP\u2019s young lions Acosta and Fermin Aldeguer<\/a>, who were riding out of themselves for third place, after biting chunks out of each other in the sprint.<\/p>\n

Aldeguer rode Sunday\u2019s fastest lap, on lap 22, as he closed on 22-year-old Acosta, who responded the following lap with the second fastest lap of the race. That was enough for 21-year-old Aldeguer, who knew he had run out of time, so he eased off for a safe fourth. It was an impressive ride, considering Aldeguer\u2019s lingering injury problems, from the leg he broke in January and the fractured vertebra he suffered in June.<\/p>\n

Acosta was once again remarkable, charging through from the third row to fourth place on the first lap, his KTM<\/a> RC16 working better in the long race than in the sprint, when he was more than half a second off the winning pace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Marc M\u00e1rquez wins the 2026 MotoGP world championship, many will look back at Misano as the turning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,4280,96098,5745,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-892037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-marc-marquez","tag-misano","tag-motogp","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}