Marc Marquez’s brother Alex: ‘I’ve never seen him down like this’

The six-time MotoGP world champion suffered a bad crash during the warm-up to the Indonesian Grand Prix last month.

He missed the race, and has been ruled out of this weekend’s Argentina MotoGP, after initially suffering a concussion and then being diagnosed with diplopia (double vision).

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Marquez is plagued by vision problems - he missed the final part of the 2021 season due to damage to a nerve in his eye.

“The first days, it's normal that he was really down. I think I've never seen him down like this,” his brother Alex , the Honda rider, said.

"But fortunately the improvement is there so he's feeling really good. This morning I joked to him, 'you have one more day to be fit and come!' Just trying to make him a bit more happy. 

“He said: 'Still I cannot!'

"But he sees some improvement and it's really good for the head. I hope to see him back really soon because he's my brother and I want to see him on track but also for the Honda riders it's good to have him always on track and putting the bike on the limit."

Repsol Honda team manager Alberto Puig said: “Point One: Marc had many crashes and could not race. Point Two: In the pre-season we were very fast and then suddenly Michelin changed the tyre and our bike was also changed completely," Puig said.

"We still don’t fully understand what happened and we will have to discuss deeply with Michelin the tyre situation."

Should Marc Marquez retire?

Speaking on the latest episode of Crash.net’s MotoGP podcast, Keith Huewen said: ”It’s definitely better for him physically (to retire), there’s no doubt about that. Mentally it won’t be better for him obviously. 

“The clock is ticking… I think we’ve all felt that for some time. Originally, when he didn’t get hurt when he would crash a lot; we would all say ‘it’s only a matter of time’, then he would get hurt and we would all say he’s going to have a massive one that’s career ending. 

“Nobody wants to see it and nobody really wants to discuss it to be honest with you. But it’s something that as journalists and speculators of the sport we’ve got to. This injury he’s got at the moment it’s not like; if I can put it like a mechanical injury where you have a broken arm or a pin or whatever it is that you can fix mechanically. 

“An eye injury, for me, being completely non medical, is a bit like a brain injury. It’s something you can’t do anything about and it is what it is and you have to get over whatever the circumstances of it are. 

“Worryingly, the more he has (crashes) the more it’s going to compound his fragility. Every time he falls down, and every time he recovers from this now, he is going to be subconsciously nervous about everything that he used to do, like extending an arm, making a move of any kind.”

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Argentina MotoGP schedule

Sunday

Moto3 Warm-up (13:20-13:40 UK)

Moto2 Warm-up (13:50-14:10 UK)

MotoGP Warm-up (14:20-15:00 UK)

Moto3 Race - 21 laps (16:00 UK)

Moto2 Race - 23 laps (15:20 UK)

MotoGP Race - 25 laps (19:00 UK)

After Sunday's race, MotoGP heads straight to Texas for next weekend's round at COTA, ruling out a delayed Monday race in Argentina.