The king of the Sachsenring is back. Six-time MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez (Honda) hopes to rise from the ashes at the German Grand Prix this weekend after missing the 2022 edition, but beware of the Ducati armada and its championship leader Francesco Bagnaia. Never has a driver imposed himself as much as him on the Sachsenring: with eight victories in Saxony in eight participations, Marc Marquez is undefeated there. Only an umpteenth operation of the right arm, last year, had put an end to his hegemony on his playground by keeping him away from the circuits.
Sunday, at the arrival of the seventh round of the season, the victory would be all the more beautiful as it would put an end to more than 600 days without success, a sad record for the Spaniard who no longer won in racing since October 2021, during the Emilia-Romagna GP. Since a fall at the dawn of the 2020 season, Marquez has struggled to regain his best level, oscillating between physical glitches and new falls.
In Germany, the Honda rider knows it: “the competition is there, so we will have to apply ourselves from the start of the weekend to prepare for Saturday and Sunday and continue to work with Honda to improve ourselves”. The Japanese manufacturer will however have to do without half of its workforce this weekend, since the Spaniards Joan Mir, teammate of Marquez, and Alex Rins, pilot of the Honda-LCR satellite team, are injured and therefore forfeited.
Unlike Honda, all eight Ducatis entered in the championship will be present in Saxony. Starting with that of Francesco Bagnaia, winner last weekend in Italy. At Mugello, the reigning Italian world champion beat two other Ducatis, those of Spaniard Jorge Martin and Frenchman Johann Zarco, while Marquez crashed when he was fourth.
Thanks to his three race victories – and his three successes in the sprints contested the day before each GP, “Pecco” Bagnaia arrives in Germany with a lead of 21 points in the championship over his compatriot Marco Bezzecchi (Ducati-VR46) and 24 on Martin, third. Proof, however, that the Ducati are not fully favorites this weekend: the last time one of them won on the German track was 15 years ago, with Australian Casey Stoner. Last year, Zarco and another Australian, Jack Miller, who has since left for KTM, gave the Borgo Panigale team its first podium since 2016.
On the Sachsenring, one of the few circuits where the drivers turn counter-clockwise, the other Frenchman on the grid Fabio Quartararo will try to repeat his performance from last year, where he had imposed in front of Zarco – the Frenchman’s last victory to date. For the time being, the 2021 world champion, in difficulty since the start of the season on the handlebars of his Yamaha, is in 8th place in the championship, 77 points from the leader.
But “El Diablo” will certainly have Bagnaia’s situation in mind at this time last year: while the Frenchman occupied a comfortable provisional first place in the general standings, the Italian was relegated to nearly 100 points behind the leader at the end of the German round… before starting an incredible comeback until winning the title of world champion.
