Marquez: Honda MotoGP riders crashing because of ‘winning mentality’

Marc Marquez has put his and his Honda MotoGP stablemates’ frequency of crashes to riding with a “winning mentality” on a bike which is not capable.

The six-time premier class champion crashed out of a potential podium finish on Lap 6 at Mugello when he ran wide at Bucine while tailing third-placed Luca Marini and lost the front.

Marquez remains yet to finish a Grand Prix race this year having only started three out of six, although he missed the other three due to injuries sustained in a crash in Round 1.

At The Italian Grand Prix, only he and LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami made the start of Sunday’s feature race in terms of the Honda contingent, with Joan Mir and Alex Rins both withdrawing due to injuries suffered earlier in the weekend.

“Friday was Mir, yesterday was Rins – I wish the best recovery for both of them – today was me,” noted Marquez.

“Lucky for me, I escaped from that crash [unhurt].

“I was trying to control myself a lot here because I know that a crash with these high speeds normally you get injured, like Mir and Rins.

“But we are crashing too much. Honda has riders with a winning mentality and if you put riders with a winning mentality and you don’t have the chance to be [up] there, the problem is that you will crash more and more times because we’re pushing more than the others to be on the lap times. And this is what happened.

“But I keep going, I keep pushing, and we need to be together and work with the team to change the situation for the future, for these next races, the second part of the season, and especially for the next year.”

Explaining his latest fall, Marquez put it down to front brake locking.

“I was trying to control myself during the race,” he recounted.

“I put the soft tyre, but I didn’t attack in the beginning just to keep the tyre and I knew that my position was sixth, seventh, and I was already better than that.

“But I had a big shaking. Already in the first lap I had a big locking on Turn 10 that I nearly crashed and I didn’t understand why; similar to Portimao [when Marquez crashed into Miguel Oliveira in Round 1].

“Then I had another locking on that [final] turn on the brakes. I went wide, and that was when I made my mistake.

“I didn’t lean more than usual, but it was more dirty out of the line and I lost the front.”

Marquez sits 18th in the championship on 15 points, while Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia leads on 131 after sweeping the Italy MotoGP weekend.

The season continues this coming weekend at the Sachsenring in Germany.