MotoGP 2020 isn’t illegitimate without Marquez

For those who don’t know, Marquez was leading the first round of the COVID-19 affected MotoGP calendar when he pulled off another typical only-he-can-save move, launching himself into the gravel and proving he’d probably win if he competed in the World Motocross Championship, too. What then ensued was a jaw dropping display as he scythed his way through the field in what most riders would regard as damage limitation.

Damage limitation soon turned to just outright damaging, as the charge cooked his tyres and he went off at the very same corner as the original incident, but this time in a much more dramatic way, tumbling through the gravel and breaking his arm in the process. His injury timeline is predicted to be 10-12 weeks – enough to miss at least the first eight rounds of season. But this is Marquez. Knowing how crazy that man is he’ll probably be racing again in three weeks when the travelling circus arrives at Brno.

The threat of a vastly Marquez-free season has got some voices chattering that without him on the grid, whoever wins the title will know that it’s not a real victory, and that unless Marquez is back by Brno it will be a hollow victory.

To suggest so disrespects everyone on the grid. Cal Crutchlow (who also missed the opening round due to a concussion suffered in Sunday morning warmup) was interviewed ahead of the weekend discussing his options for 2021 and stated plainly that everyone on the grid is a fantastic rider. You don’t get to MotoGP if you’re not a brilliant rider. And he’s right. It just so happens that Marc Marquez is in a different league to anyone else.

Just because Marquez may be, on his day, a league or two ahead of the rest of the field doesn’t mean that whoever wins because he was injured is any less worthy of being called champion. Without Marquez in the hunt, it becomes an entirely different season with an entirely different set of skills needed.

Going into this season it was clearly going to be another case of “Can anyone beat Marquez” but now the race has been blown wide open. Andrea Dovizioso has finished runner-up to the Repsol Honda for the last three years in a row, so will be champing at the bit to go one step better in 2020. Meanwhile there’s the new kid on the block, Fabio Quatararo, who took his maiden win at Jerez following Marquez’s spill. And don’t count out Maverick Viñales, who needs a big season before Quatararo joins him at the works Yamaha squad in 2021.

There you have three riders who are all capable of winning, all of whom will be taking each other to the absolute limit with or without Marquez on the grid. They’ll have to do that for (at least) 13 races this season. At the end of the year, one of them will have amassed more points than the others, and will be crowned champion. No asterisks, no reduced sized trophies, they will be champion.

This isn’t an entirely new situation. In 1992 Wayne Rainey won his third and final 500cc World Championship, but the first half of the season was dominated by Mick Doohan, who was on course to take his first World Championship until an injury at the Dutch TT put him on the shelf for the next four rounds. Rainey won the title by four points, and it’s easy to say that Doohan would have scored those five extra points needed at any of the four races he missed. But he didn’t, so he wasn’t champion. No-one disputes the fact that Rainey is a three time World Champion. He made it to the end of the year without missing a round, something Doohan didn’t. The Australian made up for the disappointment by winning the next five titles on the bounce.

You can even look at the four-wheel world for similar situations. Would James Hunt have won the 1976 title were it not for Niki Lauda missing two races following his German Grand Prix crash? No. Is his title ever questioned? No. Would Mika Häkkinen have lost the 1999 title to Michael Schumacher had he not broken his leg at Silverstone? Very probably. Is it ever mentioned when you call him a two-time champion? Absolutely not.

One of the most overused phrases in motorsport is “to finish first, first you have to finish”, and Marc Marquez failed to finish, plain and simple. He went off at the same corner twice in one race when all his rivals kept it upright until the chequered flag. Whether or not you can blitz your opponents in terms of race pace means nothing if you can’t get to the finish line.

However many races Marquez misses over the coming weeks does nothing in regard to the legitimacy of the end result, but it has certainly spiced up a season that was looking like a foregone conclusion before it had even started.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.