‘He’s losing many points’ – What absence means for Marquez

“I think he knows better than everybody how his physical condition is, and also how to ride a MotoGP – the last years he was just on another level.

“Of course he’s losing many points, but I think the most important right now for him is to be in the right condition.

“He missed many months without being on a MotoGP bike and maybe he will struggle a little bit when he comes, but not that much.”

Fabio Quartararo’s words, followed by the Frenchman saying he hoped to see Marc Marquez back for race three at Portimao, echoed those from most of his fellow presumed MotoGP title contenders for 2021.

The news Marquez will miss the Qatar double-header, despite the strides he seems to have taken recently in his recovery, hasn’t emboldened anyone to suggest that he won’t be a factor in the title race – but there’s certainly an acknowledgment that his job just got a lot tougher.

“I’m surprised that Marc is not here, because he was testing with a street bike two times in two different tracks,” said reigning champion Joan Mir, referencing Marquez’s recent outings on a Honda RC213V-S high-performance road bike at Barcelona and Portimao – pictured above.

“I thought that he was getting ready to come here in Qatar, and at the end to hear that [he won’t race here] – for sure it’s not positive for him because these two races, it’s something that for sure he will need.

“He will need to restart again, to see how he feels with the MotoGP bike. It will be difficult for him to restart in Portimao and to be strong in Portimao and to fight for the championship.

“But I count him [as a contender], I think he knows better than anybody how to ride a MotoGP bike and he will be strong and fast.”

There is no guarantee Marquez will pass his April 12 fitness check and rejoin the championship from round three at Portimao, and there’s no way to know how good he’ll be once he’s back.

Certainly, nobody is betting against him – new Honda team-mate Pol Espargaro has tipped him to return to the podium “very soon”, while former arch-rival Valentino Rossi feels “he can be competitive from the first race”.

“There’s a big difference riding with a street bike and then coming here and pushing on the razor’s edge every lap, with 22 other guys around you,” said Ducati’s Jack Miller.

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“He’ll be back, he’ll be strong, when it is is completely up to him, we wait for his return. But as Joan said, for sure there’s some valuable points going away. I’m sure he’s not thinking about that right at this point in time, he’s just thinking about getting back on the motorcycle.”

Miller’s comment sums up what appears to be the prevailing sentiment among those hoping to take the 2021 riders’ crown home. Nobody is bold enough to rule out Marquez, but the feeling is he needs to rediscover MotoGP first before starting to count points and look at title permutations.

As if to illustrate that, when the six riders in attendance for MotoGP’s pre-event Qatar GP press conference on Thursday were all asked to write down their championship favourites for 2021, four of the six picked Mir – these being the Espargaro brothers, Quartararo and Mir himself. Rossi named his Petronas SRT team-mate Franco Morbidelli, albeit caveating it with the fact that Morbidelli is a protege of his, while Miller, like Mir, went for himself.

In other words, nobody chose Marquez.

They may yet be proven right, but a glance at the history of the MotoGP era suggests that as long as he’s reasonably fit and makes a return at Portimao, reclaiming the crown in 2020 is far from mission impossible.

This is what would happen if you remove the eventual champion from the first two races of every season since 2002:

* excluding the real-life champion from the first two races

Of the 19 title races held since 500cc became MotoGP in 2002, the real-life champion missing the first two races – or, let’s say, being disqualified from them, as that’s effectively the same for the points table – would’ve only changed the outcome of the title race on four occasions.

Jorge Lorenzo’s late-season rally in 2015 won’t have been enough to overcome Rossi, and his retirement in the 2012 finale (pictured above) would’ve handed a first title to Dani Pedrosa.

On the flipside, however, Lorenzo would prevent Marc Marquez’s debut crown a year later in our alternative history.

Marquez making his debut two races late in 2013 would drop him to third place in the standings, but that is a minor change compared to Nicky Hayden’s 2006 crown, which would’ve turned to fifth place with an initial two-race absence.

That’s how vital Hayden’s early podiums were that season. Rossi (pictured above with Hayden) gets another MotoGP title in our reworking of history.

All of that should of course be caveated with the fact that the real-time points situation would be different in each case and thus risk assessments and strategies would change.

And it’s also worth noting that in many of these cases comfortable title triumphs would become real down-to-the-wire stuff instead if the champion was starting two races down.

But it’s still remarkable how many champions would’ve stayed champions. Even last year, with the shrunken 14-race calendar, disqualifying Mir from the Jerez double-header would not have meant a different champion, as it would only cost him 11 points and gain none for nearest rival Franco Morbidelli.

And of course, recall also Marquez’s recent title. In 2019, the Spaniard was so good that he could’ve easily taken a four- or five-race vacation mid-year and still brought the championship home.

All that is to say, while Marquez would certainly rather be racing in Qatar (as long as it was safe for his long-term health to do so), history makes it clear it is no killing blow for his title hopes.

It wouldn’t be even if these were two races at Sachsenring or Austin, traditional Marquez strongholds, but as for Qatar he and Honda have never been spectacular there anyway.

And if he returns in the kind of form that he’d left MotoGP in, these two absences will not matter.