Marc Marquez had one hell of a crash during FP1 ahead of the Thailand Grand Prix. He lost the rear of his bike heading into turn seven during the last ten minutes of the session and was subsequently launched into the air. Somehow, he managed to make it out okay.
Marquez was taken to the hospital after FP1 to ensure that he was actually completely fine. An MRI didn’t show anything terribly wrong, and he was back at the track to contest FP2.
Most of the videos of the incident have been taken down as a result of copyright claims, but some of the photos have been circulating Twitter that caught the rider in midair.
An interview with Honda MotoGP team boss Alberto Puig revealed some more details, as reported by Motorsport.com:
“We went to the hospital to check everything, they did an MRI and everything looks fine. Of course, he had some contusions in the back and also in the leg, and also here in the hip a little bit, but nothing to be worried of.
“We were lucky for today. We will continue with the plan, and he will have some treatment probably, and he will go out and we will try to continue with our plan.
He also speculated on the cause of the crash itself:
“The thing is that on the back straight, probably he was not on the correct line, he was on the outside line,” Puig added when asked what caused the crash. “Looks like that area is a little bit dirty, and probably the tyre got some dust there and this caused [the crash].
“It’s one possibility, the tyre was not completely clean, that was probably the reason for the crash, because he was not fast, the tyre was on the [optimal] temperature.
“So, it was a matter of that there was probably some dust or dirt on the tyre.”
Despite his crash, Marquez was still classified as running third fastest in FP1 and sixth fastest in FP2. You really can’t expect anything different from the current MotoGP points leader.
This is just one more reminder that MotoGP riders are pretty much superhuman.