Marquez recorded first Ducati MotoGP crash after 780km in testing

The crash Marc Marquez suffered towards the end of day two of the Sepang pre-season test was his first as a factory Ducati rider in MotoGP.

With 15 minutes remaining, Marquez left the pits for a time attack in a bid to move up from 14th in the day’s standings.

After a warm-up lap, Marquez improved his personal best times in sectors one and two, only to hit the ground heading into Turn 9. It was the same corner where Francesco Bagnaia crashed, albeit at the exit, during his title run-in with Jorge Martin last season.

The six-time MotoGP champion walked away unscathed but did not return on track, even with 10 minutes left, as Marquez’s back-up bike was configured for practice starts scheduled at the end of the day.

In his first stint with the title-winning Ducati team in Barcelona last November, Marquez completed 49 laps, totalling 229.07km, without falling.

The momentum continued into the first test of the year this week, as he logged 54 laps of Sepang on Wednesday and finished second behind Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.

On Thursday he added another 45 laps to his tally before crashing on what was his 46th lap of the day.  

With Sepang circuit measuring 5.543km, he had completed 548.757km when he began his 46th lap on Thursday and 100th in total across the two days. Adding the distance from the start line to Turn 9, he would have covered a total distance of around 550km.

Combining the distance he covered in the Barcelona test, Marquez completed almost 780km before crashing for the first time on a factory Desmosedici.

In 2023, his final year at Honda, he broke all records with 29 crashes during the campaign, something that was blamed on the characteristics of the increasingly hard-to-ride RC213V. Even his team-mate and 2020 champion Joan Mir recorded 24 falls that same season.

Additionally, last year on a Ducati GP23 entered by Gresini Racing, Marquez was leading MotoGP’s ‘crash ranking’ until rookie Pedro Acosta leapfrogged him at the end of the season. Marquez finished the year with 24 crashes, compared to 29 for Acosta.

The incident late on Thursday meant that Marquez’s fastest time of the day, a 1m58.447s, wasn’t fully representative of his speed, and in fact was much slower than the 1m57.606s lap he recorded on Wednesday.

Out of the 46 laps he completed on Thursday, only 23 were full laps – and at most he completed just three flying tours. In his first run, on the fourth lap, he had already lowered his time to 1m58.648s, and in his sixth run, on his 23rd lap of the day, he already set his best time of 1m58.447s. 

Later, in his seventh run, he completed the longest stint, with seven laps, of which five were full laps – 1m59.9s, 2m00.0s, 1m59.2s, 1m58.9s and 1m59.9s.

The Spaniard later ventured out on track four more times, one without completing any tours, and three with two flying laps in mid-to-high 1m59s.

In his last run, the 12th, Marquez had been improving his own time in the first two sectors, but in the third sector he crashed and ended his day prematurely.