– MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez was put to a tough test again at the start of the 2026 season, as he “often crashed in strange ways” due to his recent shoulder injury, resulting in a large points deficit to the two Aprilia riders Marco Bezzecchi and Jorge Martin.
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The operation immediately after his crash in the sprint at Le Mans fundamentally changed Marquez’s season. With three wins in the last four Grand Prix before the summer break, the Ducati rider has emphatically asserted his claim to another title win.
The three-time MotoGP world champion Jorge Lorenzo believes that while Marquez no longer has the ultimate speed and seemingly boundless aggression that characterized his dominant time at Honda, Lorenzo thinks the seven-time MotoGP world champion now compensates for this with increased mental strength.
“Marc’s historic comeback is incredible. From a deficit of over 100 points, he has reduced the gap to just 18 points,” Lorenzo told the Spanish TV channel DAZN and knows: “It is a championship where you have to ride extremely fast, but above all, you have to endure.”
“What strikes me,” Lorenzo continued, “is how much he has gained in intelligence and maturity. He crashes much less often. In Assen, which was probably the worst track for him, for the bike, and for his physical condition, he fought like a lion. At a certain phase in the race, he put enough pressure on Bezzecchi to force him into a mistake.”
“He is no longer as explosive and dominant as ten or twelve years ago, but today he is the most versatile and intelligent rider on the grid,” Lorenzo’s praise for Marquez.
Marquez started the 2026 season still recovering from the shoulder injury sustained at the Indonesian Grand Prix in October. The aftereffects of the injury to his right shoulder impaired Marquez’s characteristic speed in left-hand corners – for many years one of his greatest strengths.
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After Marquez’s physical condition had not sufficiently improved by the Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez in April this year, he underwent his latest operation on the day of the French Grand Prix. When he returned three weeks later in Mugello, he immediately showed an improvement in performance.
Marquez still needs time to become fully fit again, but the summer break should allow him to accelerate his recovery. Lorenzo believes that Marquez’s performances in the second half of the season will fluctuate from track to track. However, he believes that the Ducati rider will remain hard to beat on tracks that run counterclockwise.
“We must not forget that most race tracks mainly consist of right-hand corners. With this arm problem, the difference becomes even more apparent,” explains the former MotoGP rider, who was Marquez’s teammate at Honda in the 2019 season.
“Marc struggles more on clockwise tracks than before. This allows other riders to close the gap to him. However, on tracks with many left-hand corners, such as Sachsenring, Phillip Island, or Aragon, he performs significantly better.”
“Physically, he can maintain the pace [on tracks with predominantly left-hand corners] longer and does not have to conserve himself as much. There, thanks to his greatest strength, namely his outstanding speed in left-hand corners, he can make the difference,” Lorenzo analyzes.
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