Marquez suffers fracture in fifth crash of Germany MotoGP weekend

The eight-time world champion has endured a miserable weekend at the Sachsenring, a venue in which he has never been beaten at in the MotoGP class.

Marquez crashed in FP2 pushing for a lap time to get into Q2 and wiped out Pramac’s Johann Zarco as he exited the pitlane.

Both riders were unharmed, but engaged in a war of words afterwards as Marquez apportioned full blame onto Zarco.

Read more: Why the Marquez/Zarco MotoGP spat shows Honda’s situation has become untenable

Later that evening, the FIM stewards issued a notification to all riders stating it was the responsibility of the competitor exiting pitlane to be aware of any oncoming traffic into Turn 1.

On Saturday, Marquez crashed three times across both qualifying sessions, leaving him seventh on the grid.

While briefly running fifth in the 15-lap sprint later that day, several early warnings on his Honda led him to backing off and he plummeted to 11th.

He later said that the risks he was taking didn’t justify the results, given the crashes he had already had.

On Sunday morning in the 10-minute warm-up session, Marquez suffered his fifth crash of the Germany weekend when he was flicked from his Honda going through Turn 6.

Marquez limped away from the crash site and stood for a lengthy spell trackside looking dejected before returning to his garage.

Not even debriefing with his team, Marquez went straight to his office to get changed before being taken to the medical centre for checks.

MotoGP confirmed via its social media channels that Marquez has suffered “a very small fracture in his first finger of his left hand”, but has been declared fit to race.

Marquez then withdrew from this afternoon’s 30-lap German GP, scuppering his hopes of a 12th victory at the Sachsenring.

Marquez’s crash tally for the 2023 season now stands at 12 having missed three rounds with injury, putting him equal with his injured Honda team-mate Joan Mir at the top of the fall charts.

LCR’s Alex Rins, who won the Americas GP, is out of action indefinitely after breaking his leg in a crash at Mugello.

On Friday, Takaaki Nakagami on the sister LCR Honda suffered a fast crash at Turn 11 at the Sachsenring and aggravated a hand injury he sustained last year.