Marquez hints COTA crash caused by Honda mechanical issue

Marc Marquez remains coy about the exact cause of his crash while leading the Americas MotoGP but is certain his Repsol Honda squad has fixed a potential engine issue following tests run before this weekend’s Spanish round at Jerez.

The reigning MotoGP world champion lost his points lead after tumbling out of the race at the Circuit of the Americas with a comfortable lead, which saw him slip to fourth in the standings and nine points behind new leader Andrea Dovizioso, which triggered a thorough analysis into the surprising fall for the Spaniard.

Marquez confirmed a successful investigation into the crash has been completed and after test rider Stefan Bradl underwent a private Honda test to check the problem the 26-year-old says he’s confident a solution has been uncovered.

While Marquez refused to go into detail about the issue, he hinted the off was triggered by a mechanical issue related to his engine set-up rather than purely a rider error as it had initially appeared. He also revealed his team had been aware of the issue during both the previous round in Argentina and during the United States round.

“The most important thing for myself was we understood as a team why I crashed because I was riding in a really good way and I felt good confident with the bike,” Marquez explained. “It was difficult to understand. After analysing many, many things we understood.

“Of course it is my fault in the end as I crashed. But during the weekend in Austin I said that we had a small problem that we needed to fix and this small problem was there in the race. It is a race track where we have those first-gear corners which is really strange. It is the first time in the championship we have these kind of corners and we had a problem.

“It was difficult to understand for me why I crashed because I was riding really good and smooth like Argentina. So I didn’t expect it.

“When I deeply analysed it with my team we understood the crash came from something. I cannot say what but it was coming from something that I didn’t expect because it was not coming at every lap. Some laps yes and some laps no. But they fixed it so that is important.

“It was a crash and that small problem was coming from Argentina, they changed something for Austin and they expect to fix there but we saw that we didn’t fix. But now they expect and they test already with Bradl and looks like it’s fixed.”

As a result of the fix, Marquez is adamant the problem will not reoccur at this weekend’s Spanish MotoGP, a race he won 12 months ago, and remains unflustered by the off despite losing a likely 25 points in Austin and with it the championship lead.

“We were in the third race of the championship. Now the fourth,” he said. “The engine is new and sometimes happens.

“But the most important thing is that after a mistake, a zero, we are only nine points behind the first guy so it’s nothing.”

After the pre-event Spanish MotoGP press conference, Marquez took to Twitter to clarify his comments.

Was not a mechanical problem, were some problems during all weekend that create some difficult moments and helped to make the mistake, but it was my fault

— Marc Márquez (@marcmarquez93) May 2, 2019