Márquez revealed that the aftermath had been difficult to deal with, as he was forced to stop training and rest completely. “It was four to five weeks completely on the sofa watching TV,” he said. “It was hard at the beginning. Nothing to do at home. The hours were very long.”
The tight championship battle hasn’t helped either, as the eight-time champion contemplated the missed opportunity to add to his string of titles.
“It’s the most difficult, to watch races at home,” he said. “You are there watching the practice, watching the races, you would like to be there. Then when you see that it’s so equal, many different winners during a season and you see that they have only 84 points after so many races you become even more motivated to come back.
“It looks strange that after seven races I am only 84 points behind the leader, and I have zero!”
Márquez joked: “It’s strange because it looks like nobody wants to win! Nobody wants to be at the top.”
Asked to pick his favourites for the title, the Honda rider sat on the fence, questioning what had happened to Fabio Quartararo’s early season form.
“In Austria I said Quartararo or Dovizioso but, honestly speaking, I expected more from them. Especially from Quartararo, I expect much more because he won the first two races with an incredible level and now, I don’t know what is going on. He struggles a lot, even in one of his strongest points: Qualifying practice.
“Dovizioso is consistent, he is there but he needs more speed if he wants to win the title and we see that Viñales is there, Mir is there, I mean we have eight, nine riders within 25 points so it will be interesting to see the end of the season. And yeah, we will try to experience the show from the inside!”
He thanked fans for the many messages of support and said that he was in touch with brother and team-mate Alex during each race weekend of his tough MotoGP debut season.
In Marc’s absence, Honda’s riders have struggled to come close to his performances on the RC213V, but Alex recorded his best result of the season last weekend, climbing from 17th to seventh on the grid.
“Alex is in a difficult situation,” he said. “When you have a rookie rider on the other part of the garage [and] one driver out from the first race.
“It now looks like it’s normal. I try help Alex. I try on the Thursday when they have the tyre allocation, he send me the photo and I try to give some advice.”
Even so, last weekend was a tough one for a team riddled with right arm injuries, however, with Marc’s replacement, Stefan Bradl and Cal Cruthlow sidelined with their own right arm issues.