MotoGP's Fraternal Title Fight On The Ropes After Alex Marquez Breaks Hand In Crash
The dream MotoGP championship battle between brothers Marc and Alex Márquez has reached a tipping point after Sunday's Dutch TT. Álex violently crashed out during the race's early stages while Marc secured his sixth feature victory of the season. The younger Márquez fractured his hand in the crash, but is still expected to contest the next round in Germany. However, the injury didn't come without insult. The Ducati factory rider chastised the media during the post-race press conference for claiming that Álex doesn't race him as hard as other riders after Saturday's sprint race.
Álex suffered a subcapital fracture of the second metacarpal, according to MotoGP. The Gresini rider slammed straight into the pavement after rubbing shoulders with KTM's Pedro Acosta while fighting for fourth place. The same day as the crash, he flew to Madrid and underwent surgery to repair the fracture. He'll still need to be medically cleared by championship staff to return to competition. Even Álex doesn't miss a race, it was the worst point of the season to put up a goose egg in the box score.
Marc now has a 68-point lead in the standings ahead of Álex, as MotoGP heads to the older Márquez's best circuit. Between 2012 and 2021, Marc had a decade-long undefeated streak at the Sachsenring, which was only interrupted for a single season by the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the current points system, 37 points is the most a rider can score in a single weekend. Saturday's sprint race winner nets 12 points, and Sunday's race takes home 25 points. Marc has nearly two entire weekends in hand.
With Álex being the only rider in Marc's area code this season, his performance has been under more scrutiny than ever before. Many haven't ignored that in nine of Marc's wins this season, Álex was the runner-up. Things reached a boiling point after the ninth Márquez 1-2 finish during Saturday's sprint. Marc directly addressed the criticism aimed at Álex after Sunday's race and said during the press conference:
"Yesterday, in the media scrum, [they] started to think that 'ah, your brother didn't attack you as other riders', and even some mechanics told me that on social media people started to talk about things. And today, Marco [Bezzecchi], why didn't he attack me? At the end, if the front rider is in a very equal level, in this racetrack that is super narrow, you cannot attack the front rider."
Marc is correct. Assen is one of the most challenging tracks on the calendar to pass with the current generation of winged motorcycles. Álex couldn't pass because of the conditions, not by choice. He has always raced in the shadow of his older brother Marc, an eight-time world champion, despite having two world titles of his own in Moto2 and Moto3. Álex didn't win a race in the top class until this year, his 6th MotoGP season. However, this breakthrough victory comes during the best season of his career. There's only one rider on the planet better than him, Marc Márquez.
