Marc Márquez: ‘If I see a wall I go through it’

The book, subtitled This Is How I Win My Race, comes out at a time when Márquez’s career is once again full of doubts. Not physical, this time, but contractual, so the question is no longer, will he be fit enough to win again? But will he have a good enough bike to win again?

Being Marc Márquez is autobiographical but doesn’t have the usual format of a life story. It’s divided into chapters, titled Technology, Loyalty, Concentration, Ego, Friendship and so on.

There are some great lines…

“If I see a wall I go through it. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter how many goes it takes or how hard I hit my head: I won’t stop until I’ve got through the wall… This has always been my approach and it will never change.”

Even though he knows his next big accident could be his last, due to the double-vision problems that have threatened his career more than the many broken bones.

“I know full well that the next massive crash could not only end my career but also affect me for the rest of my life.”

Like most racers he’s an adrenaline junkie, but he’s got a bigger habit than most.

“I need the maximum amount of adrenaline in the shortest time. And I need to be on the limit.”

To me, Márquez has always been MotoGP’s Ayrton Senna: utterly ruthless, win by any means necessary, his dedication to surpassing the limit almost spiritual.

This is Senna talking, back in the day…

“On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, ‘Okay, this is the limit’. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.”

Márquez is the same, or at least, he was…

“My life was like a rocket. I only ever lifted off, flew, ever faster, even higher, up towards the light. It was a wonderful trip, but I thought it was normal.”

Márquez has yet to fly higher than he flew in 2019, when he rode arguably the greatest premier-class campaign in history: 12 victories, six second places and one DNF (a crash, while leading, caused by a technical glitch) from 19 races, at a time when the motorcycles have never been more equal and the tyres rarely trickier…

Márquez calls 2019, “that flow year”.

Flow is an almost transcendental state when you can effortlessly surpass your normal capabilities, because you’re riding with your subconscious, not your conscious, so even though you’re going faster than ever you don’t feel like you’re really trying.

“Strange as it may sound, when you’re really fast, riding doesn’t feel like much of an effort… Flow riding is a wonderful feeling. The last time I managed that was at Jerez in 2020.”

Márquez made everyone else look silly in that race, until he crashed and his bike hit him, taking his career from the highest highs to the deepest lows, from which he has yet to fully escape.

The book addresses his gruesome journey through multiple surgeries and some of the issues that currently face him. For example, how downforce aerodynamics have utterly transformed MotoGP.

Márquez has always won races by riding loose – if the rear slides, he doesn’t care, if the front slides, he doesn’t care. But that way of riding doesn’t work like it used to.

“The more the bike slides, the more inefficient the aerodynamics,” he affirms.

“I lean the bike over far more than almost any other rider on the grid: 60 degrees is normal for me. With some aerodynamic set-ups I couldn’t manage more than 56 degrees. I just couldn’t force the bike down.”

And how downforce aero makes overtaking and battling with other riders more and more difficult.

“Motorcycles lose contact pressure [engineers now call this air-stop] in the slipstream, so that the bike of the rider behind brakes worse than the guy he’s following. In the acceleration phase, you used to have fewer wheelies than the guy you’re chasing. With aero? The exact opposite! The wings are worse at holding the front down in the slipstream and the rider can’t get on the throttle as quickly. None of this is good for action…

“But I have to adjust to the idiosyncrasies [downforce aero], even though I’m not a fan.”

In fact Márquez says that Honda’s struggles didn’t start when Ducati started the aero revolution a few years ago. He says they started in 2016, when MotoGP switched from Bridgestone tyres to Michelin and from tailor-made factory rider-control software to a spec Magneti Marelli system, based on the system the Italian electronics company had developed with Ducati.

“The technical difficulties began to appear after our third season together,” says the 30-year-old, who contested his rookie MotoGP season with Honda in 2013.

Márquez has always made the difference with his mastery of the front tyre. He calls Bridgestone’s astonishingly good front slick “my beloved” tyre, although in some ways Michelin’s less-effective front slick increased his advantage, because he could handle the front tyre sliding all the time while his rivals couldn’t.

Electronics – traction control and so on – are a different matter. Honda has suffered in this area since 2016 and seems to have even bigger struggles with the spec software now than in recent seasons. Witness Márquez’s massive highside at Sachsenring last month, his fifth tumble of the weekend and possibly the crash that made him think he needs a different motorcycle.

Márquez also discusses Honda’s apparent difficulties in keeping up with the European factories – Ducati, Aprilia and KTM.

“The European approach is ‘problem – solution’. The Japanese approach is a little longer: ‘problem, analysis, discussion, solution’.

“Honda has to provide me with a bike that makes winning possible. The gloss of the iconic Repsol Honda team has dimmed for me in recent years, but it’s still there.”

He said this before the start of the season, when the book was put together. His reaction after recent crashes at Sachsenring and Mugello suggests the gloss has faded even more.

The man behind Being Marc Márquez is his new manager, Jaime Martinez, who used to work at Red Bull. It’s a Red Bull production, just like the documentary series All In. This is the modern way – there is invariably a commercial link between sports people and their media presence.

Being Marc Márquez with Werner Jessner. Published by Gestalten. Price £30.00