Only one of Marc Marquez's two painful crashes in Assen Friday practice really irritated the six-time MotoGP champion - and it was the one that also gave him a shortlived injury scare.
Marquez took a big tumble at Ramshoek on his very first run in opening practice, losing the rear of his Ducati off-throttle, and looking quite alarmed in the gravel in the aftermath - as he quickly took off his left glove to check if he'd done any major damage to his hand.
Though he has been the clear standout in MotoGP this year, his 40-point lead isn't large enough to afford him any kind of injury absence.
"I was a bit scared. I hit my nerve, cubital [ulnar] nerve," he said, referring to the nerve in the elbow.
"And my hand was sleeping. And for that reason I took off my glove super quick, to understand what's going on on my arm.
"I was able to move but the feeling was zero."
Far from ideal for @marcmarquez93 😱😱😱
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 27, 2025
A big whack for the Championship leader but glad to see he got back up 👍#DutchGP 🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/hX6uoLvJtt
That feeling quickly came back and he was able to end the opening session fastest. He was then on track to potentially do the same in the second session, but fell off at Ruskenhoek during his qualifying-spec run.
Why the crashes happened
"The one that I needed to avoid was the first crash - that was the third lap, not the correct temperature on the tyre. The second one was time attack, it can happen," summed up Marquez.
The tyre in question was the medium rear, and he described the crash as "the big mistake" given the condition of the track - but it also meant he was able to pick up right where he'd left off when he returned to the track, as "the thing is that when you understand why you crashed, then I go out and I do [push] the same".
"The second run I just warmed it up well, I went out from the box a bit faster already and it was OK."
For the crash in the second session, Marquez did have more of an explanation than just it being a normal qualifying-speed tip-off.
"I was forced to use the front tyre from this morning's crash. I did the time attack with that tyre.
"It was a tyre that cooled down, was heated again, with more laps, only two laps but [still] more laps. And then I put on a new rear tyre for the last attack [while keeping the same front] and was already eight laps [done] on the front, already the performance started to drop."
Why it hurt
While Marquez's first crash looked obviously painful in the moment, perhaps the worst he's had at Ducati yet, his second looked relatively innocuous and yet also caused a pained reaction.
Part of this was because Marquez had taken a hit to his groin. "Yeah. I don't know if you ever hit [there] - it arrives with some delay," he chuckled. "Always. You say 'OK, I get up' and suddenly I start to feel like I couldn't breathe."
This is what happened at Turn 7! @marcmarquez93 😱#DutchGP 🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/XAAl1uxwko
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 27, 2025
But in the end it amounted to more than that, with Ducati confirming "bruises to face, finger and stomach" as the diagnosis after a post-session medical centre check-up.
"They were not big crashes, but both of them, in both corners, when I arrived on the gravel, I was hit a lot - because it's not gravel, it's rocks here," Marquez emphasised. "The gravel is too big.
"They need to fix it for next year. It's a circuit where normally when you crash you arrive with a very high speed.
"I mean, you can see [it]. You can go in the gravel and the rocks are quite big."
