• Pre-season. Honda admits her problems: "We don't know the solution"

On November 25, a few hours after leaving for the beaches of a warm country, in the last tests of 2019, Marc Márquez suffered a violent fall in curve 13 of the Jerez circuit and had to run to his doctor's office of confidence, Xavier Mir , to confirm what the pain already told him: his healthy shoulder, the right one, had ceased to be. A year after surgery on his left shoulder, the trauma specialist invited him to return to the operating room "on a preventive basis", to avoid a season of pain, and, for the second consecutive winter, his vacation plans were nowhere.

With his suitcase full of swimsuits and shorts, he suddenly discovered himself in the Andalusian circuit at a meeting with his people and the people in charge of Honda to assess his options. Together they grouped the pros and cons of the intervention, but in the end the conclave met in a question that Alberto Puig launched: "Marc, are you willing to spend another winter in the gym?" The answer could only be affirmative. And so it all began.

From the intervention on November 27 at the Dexeus-Quirón University Hospital in Barcelona, ​​Márquez spent almost four hours a day with Carlos J. García , his physiotherapist - in 10 weeks, 92 sessions and 250 hours of rehabilitation-, and at the beginning everything went as it should. In the first days, like a year earlier, they focused on recovering complete shoulder mobility and then dedicated themselves to returning the tone to the muscles of the area. Then something failed.

"Don't even take a glass of water"

«We saw that in one of the most important muscles, the deltoid, a nerve was like something damaged. It is something that can happen in an operation, it is not a mistake, but we had to start working very hard with other muscles to compensate for it, ”summed up Márquez, who in January, on Garcia's couch, understood that the road to his seventh title MotoGP would be more meandering than expected.

At the beginning of January, as he confessed, "I couldn't even get a glass of water." At the end of that month, in Malaysian training, he suffered the unspeakable. And already in February, these last three days, in the Qatar tests, it has still been painful. On the first day, in fact, he needed to get off the bike because of the pain, on the second day he suffered a fall and, in the time classification, he has finished away from his main rivals, Fabio Quartararo , Maverick Viñales and Álex Rins .

The closeness of the first World Cup race, next March 8 also in Qatar, does not favor him, and the introduction of the new Thai Grand Prix before the American tour, where he always picked up pace, delves into his problems. «I am worried about the shoulder, of course, but not only because of that. I am worried because I do not see myself to finish in the top five in the first race of Qatar, because we are not fast in all circuits, ”said the driver himself in reference to his Honda.

Opposite sensations in Honda

In Márquez's team, while ruling out the possibility of a second pilot operation, the nerves were noticeable. A year earlier, the preseason served to demonstrate from the beginning that they had the fastest motorcycle in the championship and this course the sensations are completely opposite. Suzuki and Yamaha have confirmed their evolution, Ducati has presented his inventions and Honda seems to have lagged behind.

Beyond the results of a stubborn Marc, his brother Alex has also remained in the last places of the classification and the two pilots of satellite equipment, Cal Crutchlow and Taakaki Nakagami , more of the same. The joy for the title in 2019 and the historic renewal of Marc Márquez until 2024 has lasted little. Before the serious starts, his dominance of the World Cup is already in doubt.

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