The trigger that made Márquez formidable on the Ducati

Throughout his career, left turns are the ones that have most allowed Marc Márquez to make the difference over his opponents. The Sachsenring quickly became “his” circuit: with only three curves on the right and very long turns on the left, he got into the habit of shining there by accumulating 11 victories, including eight in MotoGP.

More generally, circuits with a counterclockwise direction are those that are most successful for him, and it was therefore no coincidence to see him achieve his first success with the Ducati at the Aragón GP in 2024, on another track where he has often served as a reference. “It’s a circuit that turns to the left!” summed up after a long hesitation Frankie Carchedi, Marc Márquez's chief mechanic at Gresini, in the Crash.net podcast.

After an entire season of constantly talking with Márquez and going through his data, Carchedi is not really able to reveal the driver's secret in these curves: “I joked about it with Marc recently. It took me a long time to understand how he approaches left turns, because everyone always says there's another level.”

“I understood what he does and how he does it. Being able to explain it and someone else being able to do it is another story! I'm sure others have seen his data and try to do it again but it's one thing to understand what it does and another to reproduce it.”

If Márquez has always worked wonders on left turns, those on the right have sometimes been more difficult for him, especially in 2024. “To do a ride on the Ducati, he has a technique that you have to get used to”explained Carchedi. This technique was not natural for Marquez after 11 seasons at Honda. It took him many months to lose his automatisms and gain new ones. Carchedi believes that “tremendous progress” were accomplished… to the point of allowing the driver to shine on theoretically unfavorable tracks.

“Even in the last races, Marc always found the fast right-hand corners the most difficult. We did a lot of analysis of the race pace – not just on the fastest sectors but on the average times in the sectors – and in Sepang and Catalunya, the two he probably hates the most, we were faster in the last sector [de Barcelone]which only has fast turns on the right, and in the first sector of Sepang, which has the very fast turn 3 [sur la droite].”

“For me, given where we started from and the difficulties we had, personally too, it was very good. In an area where he had difficulty, or which he did not like, he became the most efficient at the end of the year.”

Misano, the symbol of Marquez’s progress

In this sense, the victory achieved at the San Marino GP, barely a week after that of MotorLand Aragón, was perhaps the most significant for Carchedi. Márquez was able to take advantage of a short downpour to climb from fifth to first place in a few turns… which were mainly on the right.

“It was a combination of two things. The first comes from Marc's abilities in these conditions to propel himself to the front, an area where no one comes close to him. Then, the track was dry in the second part of the race and he finished in front of Pecco while escaping, on what is undoubtedly the best track [de Bagnaia]. He was able to do it on a different kind of circuit, which turns to the right, with fast turns to the right, and then he was able to escape.”

“It also showed the importance of starting at the front. Without the rain, even if he was the fastest in the second part of the race, he would not have been able to run at that pace, it was impossible: the tires were overheating [en étant dans un groupe]the circumstances are different. It showed him that if he started from the front, the race was very different.”

Getting to the same level as the others… let's just say that puts him in a good position for the future.

It is therefore in the exercise of qualifications that Márquez must now make the most progress. As for those already carried out in curves, Carchedi sees this as an achievement: “At the start of the year, we lost maybe three or four tenths in a corner, it wasn’t bad. In an area that I'm sure he will always describe as a weakness, getting to the same level as the others… let's just say it puts him in a good position for the future.”

With this experience and while he has several times been able to measure himself against riders with a Ducati more efficient than his own, what can Marc Márquez hope for this year with the most recent evolution of the Italian motorcycle? Carchedi has no doubts about the potential of #93: “Marc had his own goals, we had ours… In the future, I'm sure his goals will be different.”

“For his second year on the bike, in fact two years of developments on his bike… The guy won 20 podiums [en 2024]so I’ll stick to that!” the technician simply commented. The competition is warned.