If there is a master in complicating life and putting on a show, it is Marc Márquez. The eight-time world champion had everything in his sights at Phillip Island, one of his favorite circuits, to fight for victory. And boy did he fight. The Gresini driver made up for it with another masterful comeback and a nice duel with Jorge Martín, the leader of the competition thanks to his second position in the Australian GP, a slip in the game that made him fall from second to eighth position.
The 93 had one of the best rhythms on the grid and the tension of the battle for the World Championship oppressed its two great rivals on the track. But fate wanted to complicate things for him, as has already happened on more than one occasion this campaign. The innocent maneuver of removing the ‘tear-off’, the plastic strip that protects the helmet visor from dirt, on the starting grid caused his motorcycle to skid like a wild colt, out of control. Of all the possible places, that little plastic stuck to the rear wheel and almost ruined his career and that of someone else who was coming up behind him.
Controlling the tails of the Ducati Gresini, Márquez did magic to hold on in the front group in the first lap, saving the lead and consolidating himself in seventh place. Ahead, Martín smiled and repeated the script of his perfect Saturday on the other side of the world, leaving like a shot and escaping from the start. From behind, Marco Bezzecchi and Pecco Bagnaia were stalking him. The first had everything to lose, sanctioned with a long lap after his attack on Maverick Viñales on Saturday. The second was gritting his teeth to try to get closer to his great rival for the championship, with four races to go.
With Bezzecchi offside in the fourth round, Martín already took a second off the defender of the crown thanks to his explosiveness at the start. Behind, however, Márquez had already begun the comeback operation. He took down Enea Bastianini to start, and then took advantage of Bezzecchi’s distraction to sneak past Brad Binder and place fourth on the fourth lap. Half the work done in the blink of an eye. But the most difficult thing remained.
When he chased down Franco Morbidelli and took a podium position, on the sixth lap, he was 1.7 seconds away from the leader of the race and the competition, one second behind the world champion. Freed and with space, Márquez began to set fast laps and put pressure on the two contenders for the 2024 crown. On the tenth lap, he was already close to Bagnaia’s tail, and a mistake by Martín allowed the front group to compact and become fireworks will be unleashed.
The Turin native smelled blood on lap 12 and slipped inside turn four, a classic, to the Madrid native, who immediately returned it to him. The Catalan, always a crook, took advantage of the confusion to give the bike to the man who will be his next teammate in the official Ducati team. From seeing himself as the winner to moving to the rear, Bagnaia no longer gave problems to the two strongest drivers of the weekend, who ended up gaining more than eight seconds on him at the finish line.
The devastating pace of the two at the top extolled the virtues of a Márquez with last year’s machinery and the courage of a Martín who did not shrink from the attacks of the most experienced driver on the grid in this type of battle. One had nothing to lose, the other quite the opposite. After a chase at the limit of 12 laps, the 89 went a little long in lap four and the 93 took advantage to take the lead with four laps to go. The title contender, not satisfied, returned the toast by using the highest top speed of his Ducati pata negra to overtake him on the finish line. He ended up, however, giving way again in the fourth corner of the circuit, three laps from the end, raising the bike to avoid contact after the most aggressive overtaking of the day by the eight-time world champion.
The third victory of the year for Márquez confirms that he has been able to return to his best form and keeps his winning gene intact at the gates of his year of revalidation with the official Ducati that has raised the performance of the two current leaders of the contest. For his part, Martín’s thirteenth podium allowed him to extend a little more, to 20 points, the advantage over Bagnaia at the head of a World Cup that is still close and very close, although the moral victory goes to the Spaniard in this seventeenth round of the championship.
