Marc Marquez crashes twice at high speed on Friday – he criticizes the large stones in the Assen gravel traps and calls for changes
The first day of practice at the Dutch TT in Assen was marked by numerous crashes, especially in the afternoon session. Marc Marquez crashed twice on Friday – once in the first practice session in the late morning and once in the second practice session.
Following the second practice session, in which he qualified directly for Q2 in sixth place, the championship leader visited the medical center. Shortly after the checks, Ducati gave the all-clear.
The examinations confirmed that Marquez had not suffered any broken bones. He only sustained abrasions to his face, finger, stomach, and left elbow – the latter already sustained in the crash in the morning.
In the first practice session, the Ducati rider crashed in the fast Ramshoek left-hand corner at around 190 km/h. Team manager Davide Tardozzi said in an initial statement that Marquez had made a mistake by downshifting too early.
In the early evening, Marquez himself simply said: “The first crash was on the third lap. The tire wasn’t at the right temperature.” He was on his fourth lap, but his third flying lap. The soft front tire was fitted.
While still in the gravel trap, he tore his left glove off his hand and checked his fingers. “Yes, I was a little scared because I hit my neck slightly – in a strange place. And my hand was completely numb.”
“That’s why I immediately took off my glove to see what was wrong with my arm. I could move it, but my hand wasn’t working.” After a few minutes, everything was fine again. MotoGP doctor Angel Charte also let him continue after a check-up.
After the crash, Marquez completed two more runs and finished the first practice session with the fastest time. Everything also went according to plan in the afternoon. But when he tackled his final qualifying lap at the end, he crashed in Ruskenhoek (turn 7).
It was another left-hand corner. At first, Marquez struggled to get back on his feet and had to be supported by two marshals. He confirmed that he felt pain in the sensitive area between his legs at first.
“You feel the effects with a slight delay. You think: Okay, I’m standing up – and then you suddenly realize that you can hardly breathe.” Marquez therefore sat down on a chair behind the guard rails to catch his breath.
After both crashes, he criticized the design of the gravel beds in Assen: “The gravel bed is too coarse. I was lying face down in the gravel at high speed, and it hit my entire abdominal area, my body parts and, yes, my face pretty hard.“
”Because, as I said – and I’ll repeat it – there are rocks in the gravel. They need to fix that by next year, because it’s a track where you usually hit the ground at very high speed when you crash.“
Was the second crash also a mistake? ”It was a qualifying attempt, but I was forced to reuse the front tire from the morning crash. I rode the attempt with that tire.”
“It had already cooled down and was then used again for a few more laps – only two, but still. And then I put a new tire on the rear, but the front had already done eight laps – so the performance had already dropped.”
Marquez has nevertheless qualified for Q2 and, as Ducati has confirmed, he will continue the weekend on Saturday. Will the two high-speed crashes still have an impact on the rest of the TT, which he won in the premier class in 2014 and 2018?
“No,” he waves it off, “in the end, as I said, the big mistake was the first crash. That should have been avoided. Because the track wasn’t ideal yet and the temperature was pretty low. But the second crash was during qualifying.“
”You can’t go out in qualifying tomorrow thinking about not crashing. So it doesn’t change my approach.” Despite the crashes, Marquez remains in contention for the Assen crown – but the road to victory has become rockier.
