Marc Marquez's American heroics of a different kind are another reminder of Honda's problems

Ordinarily, a sixth-placed finish for Marc Marquez at the American MotoGP around the Circuit of the Americas would be considered something of an underwhelming result.

However, events on Sunday, as Marquez failed to win a race around that track when finishing for the first time in his career, meant that was still a more than respectable result for the Spaniard.

Lining up ninth on the grid for the MotoGP race in Texas, a botched start due to an apparent electrical issue with his bike, saw Marquez unable to get out of first gear as every other bike on the grid roared past him, leaving the Repsol Honda last heading into the first corner.

However, he responded to that in typically spectacular Marquez style, cutting his way through the field to work all the way up to a sixth place finish, which means he can now head back to the European leg of the calendar, with his name not out of the mix for the title just yet.

Indeed, had it not been for the drama off the line, the pace and nature of the way he cut through so many bikes, means there is a strong case to be made for the suggestion that Marquez would have claimed an eighth win in nine races at the Circuit of the Americas, had he made a clean start.

That is made all the more impressive by the fact that this was Marquez’s first race back, since that huge crash in warm-up in Indonesia three weeks ago, that once again left him struggling with double vision.

What it also does, however, is serve as a reminder of the problems that Honda have got, that are so often masked by the miracles of Marquez.

For all the issues that the Spaniard endured, both in the lead-up to the weekend, and with his start, he was still the highest-finishing Honda in the States on Sunday, by quite some