A bike alarm made Marquez’s Honda “crazy” in disastrous COTA MotoGP start

The six-time MotoGP world champion was making his return to action following his double vision-induced Argentina absence at the Circuit of the Americas and was pegged by many of his rivals as a favourite to take victory in Sunday’s race even from ninth on the grid.

But a technical issue meant he barely pulled away at the start and was dropped to last by the first corner, by which point his Honda sprung into life.

Marquez admits he thought he’d engaged his pit limiter and says the bike still had a problem during the race, but it was good enough for him to charge through to sixth.

“We had a technical problem, but Honda is investigating what’s going on,” Marquez said on Sunday at COTA.

“They know already more or less, but they are investigating.

“Since I arrived on the start, I saw some alarms [on the dashboard] and then I tried to start, to not lose a lot, but the bike was crazy.

“And then I thought something big was there, but when I arrived in the first corner… I mean, from the start to the first corner there was no pushing from the bike, it was like pit limiter.

“Even I checked if I put on the pit limiter. But no.

“This alarm kept on all the race, but lucky for us at the first corner when the holeshot was disengaged, the bike works more or less in a good way – not perfect, because there was something there that was still wrong.”

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The Spaniard added that his grand prix became “a sprint race” from that moment, but his body stopped him from going any higher than sixth.

“I gave everything, and when five, six laps remained my body said ‘Ok, that’s it’ and then I just tried to finish the race and even like this I managed to finish in a good pace,” he