Marc Márquez will make his MotoGP comeback at this weekend’s French Grand Prix after missing the last three races with a broken thumb.
Márquez went down at the season-opening Portuguese Grand Prix after starting from pole position, wiping out Miguel Oliveira and sustaining a fracture to the metacarpal bone in his right thumb.
The Spaniard undertook surgery that repaired the bone with a pair of screws, but the location of the injury is where much of the braking force is transferred through.
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The screws can’t withstand the pressure applied by a rider on the brakes, and an early return would have risked reinjury. Reinjury to this part of the thumb would have ended Márquez’s career.
The six-time champion attempted to return in Jerez but delayed his comeback on medical advice, and Honda has now confirmed he will enter this weekend’s race in Le Mans.
“I am really happy to be back with the Repsol Honda Team, about to ride my bike again,” Márquez said. “First of all I want to thank my medical team for their professionalism and advice over the past few weeks.
“Of course as a rider you always want to be back as soon as possible, but with an injury like this it was really important to allow it to heal.
“Now I am here and fully focused on riding. I have no worries about the injury since it’s fully healed.
“Let’s see what the French GP brings and, most importantly, work to our maximum.”
But while Márquez is a welcome return from the long-term injury list, several other riders remain languishing off their bikes with uncertain return dates.
POL ESPARGARÓ
Chief among them is Pol Espargaró, the first to go down in a sickening crash at the season-opening Portuguese Grand Prix way back in March.
The Gas Gas rider highsided late on Friday afternoon at Portimão, crashing into the far barrier and sustaining major injuries.
It remains unclear when Espargaró will return to competitive action, but early forecasts by the team for a June comeback appear to be optimistically early judging by the Spaniard’s latest social media post.
“It’s been like a month and a week after the crash, and I can talk a little bit,” he said on Instagram late last week. “I’m saying that because I broke my jaw in two pieces.
“I’ve been with my jaw completely closed for four weeks after the crash. I couldn’t eat, I lost a lot of weight, but finally I can smile and I can talk quite good.
“Also I had an injury in my ear that has been in surgery operated on after the crash in Barcelona.”
Speedweek reported last month that the jaw injury had impaired his hearing and that several teeth had to be extracted to aid recovery.
But the more serious injury is to his back, which he admitted is likely to keep him sidelined for longer.
“I had eight fractures in my body: two in my ribs, one in my neck, three in my back, which I think are taking a bit longer, because the fractures on my back are the ones that the doctors are checking a little bit deeply.
“There is one vertebra that has lost half its size.
“You know what happens when you play with these kinds of injuries in the vertebrae. You need to be really careful, because as soon as the vertebrae are injured it’s super easy to injure your spinal cord.
“We are working with the doctors hand by hand to come back as fast as possible, but first of all I need to come back healthy.”
Espargaró has additional motivation — if he even needed it — to return to the sport given KTM’s massive upturn in form this season.
“I’m the first one that wants to jump on the bike, especially after the results in Jerez,” he said after factory riders Brad Binder and Jack Miller finished second and third in Spain. “The factory is working huge and the bike is a rocket right now, so I’m looking forward [to it].
“I don’t know when, but it’s going to be soon.”
MIGUEL OLIVEIRA
Miguel Oliveira is the newest edition to the injury list after the luckless Portuguese rider was punted out of the Spanish Grand Prix by Fabio Quartararo.
The RNF rider hit the deck after being cleaned up by Quartararo’s sliding Yamaha on the first lap of the grand prix. He was able to get up and limp back to the paddock, where he was diagnosed with a dislocated left shoulder.
That appeared to be the extent of his injuries, but further scans revealed severe damage to his anterior labrum ligament, which keeps the shoulder in the socket, and a fracture to his humerus.
The fracture hasn’t required surgery, but he will skip this weekend’s French Grand Prix to recover. The team expects him to be fit enough to enter the Italian Grand Prix in Mugello, which comes almost a month after Le Mans.
It’s been a frustrating start to the year for Oliveira, who was also punted out of his home grand prix in the first round by Marc Márquez in a crash that dealt him tendon damage and forced him to miss the Argentine Grand Prix.
The five-time winner has been hoping to find a new lease on life at RNF, which is now taking a supply of year-old Aprilia bikes after ditching Yamaha, and though he’s scored points in every sprint and race he’s finished, his two DNFs came from outside his control.
“This beginning of the year is by far the one I envisioned,” he wrote on social media, and last night he added he was “already without the arm bracelet and feeling better”.
“It’s a long recovery but some relief arrived in terms of pain,” he wrote.
His teammate, Raúl Fernández, is also on the injury list after undertaking surgery for arm pump issues he’s been experiencing for much of this season.
Fernández had an unusual nine of his muscles operated on last Thursday but is expected to be fit enough to race this weekend.
ENEA BASTIANINI
Enea Bastianini was the second rider to sustain a serious injury this season in a crash with Luca Marini in the sprint in Portugal.
The smash broke his shoulder blade, and though it didn’t require surgery, it has required a long rehabilitation.
Several times the four-time race-winner has tested himself on a Ducati road bike, which led to him attempting a comeback last time out in Jerez, but he withdrew from that weekend during free practice on Saturday citing unbearable pain while riding.
“We don’t want to take too many risks, so we’ve decided to stop,” Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi told the TV broadcast.
He’s also been ruled out of this weekend’s French Grand Prix with the hope that it’ll amount to enough recovery time to get him back on the bike for his home race in Mugello next month.
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WHAT’S WITH ALL THE MAJOR INJURIES?
The risk of a multi-rider crash on any given weekend has increased markedly this season thanks to the introduction of Saturday sprint races at every round.
We’ve even seen an unusual number of red flags owing to big crashes this season, particularly last time out in Jerez.
The difficulty overtaking in modern MotoGP is a contributor. Riders feel they’re no longer as able to make up places through a sprint or a race as they once were, which means positions gained on the first lap are particularly valuable.
The effect is worse at circuits that offer few passing opportunities — but, at the Circuit of the Americas, for example, which has many overtaking points, the sprint racing has been calmer.
There’s also a matter of race rhythm. While a grand prix distance has distinct phases for pushing and conserving, the aim of the sprint is for riders to be racing flat-out for the entire duration without having to save tyres. It’s not surprising the aggression is commensurately high.
There’s also the spectre of more crashes during Friday, when the onus is on riders to set competitive lap times that will decide whether they progress directly to Q2 or have to battle through Q1. Whereas previously they’ve had the chance to improve times in FP3 on Saturday, riders are now setting qualifying laps on a greener circuit without the bike yet dialled in.
But MotoGP will argue the throttle works both ways, and if these are the best riders in the world, it’s incumbent on them to avoid getting themselves into such dangerous situations.
