Reigning MotoGP champion Marc Marquez says his Honda team has resolved an issue that contributed to his costly crash from the lead in the Austin race.
Marquez was en route to a dominant victory at the American venue, but his perfect record of consecutive wins at the track was tarnished when he fell at the sharp Turn 12 left-hander and retired.
The Honda rider was left puzzled about the crash in the immediate aftermath.
But speaking almost three weeks later ahead of the next round at Jerez, Marquez said he now knew exactly why he had fallen in the GP of the Americas.
“The most important thing for myself is we understand, with the team, why I crashed,” he said.
“Because I was riding in a really good way, I had very good confidence with the bike and [the crash] was difficult to understand, but then after we analysed many, many things we understand [why I crashed].”
Pressed on what he had learned about the crash, Marquez said: “Of course, in the end, it’s my fault because I crashed.
“But during the weekend in Austin, I said that ‘we have a small problem, we need to fix it’, and this small problem was there in the race.
“And it’s a race track where we have these first-gear corners [that are] really strange, and it was the first time in the championship [in 2019] that we had these kinds of corners, and we had a problem.
“After we deeply analysed with my team, we understand that the crash was coming from something.
“I cannot say what but it was coming from something that I didn’t expect because [the problem] was not every lap – it was some lap, yes, some laps no.”
Marquez said Honda had been aware of a problem since the prior race in Argentina and thought it had fixed it in time for Austin.
But he confirmed the issue had to do with Honda’s new-for-2019 engine, meaning it was likely related to engine braking in low-speed corners.
“They [Honda] test already with [test rider Stefan] Bradl, and looks like it’s fixed, so this is important and it’s something that’s normal.
“We are in the third race of the championship – now in the fourth – the engine is new and sometimes [it] happens.
“The most important thing is that after a mistake, after a zero in the championship, we are only nine points behind the first guy [Andrea Dovizioso], so it’s nothing, we are still there [and in contention].”
Team-mate Jorge Lorenzo was likewise a retirement at Austin, pulling over with what Honda later diagnosed as an electrical issue.
Lorenzo said Honda took his RC213V back to base in Japan and was able to replicate the problem.
“They changed something on the electronic side to make the problem disappear,” Lorenzo said.