After Marc Márquez’s extraordinary win at the weekend, Toby Moody relives the incredible MotoGP 125s race at Estoril and speaks exclusively to Marc’s Ajo Motorsport team boss Aki Ajo.
Marc Márquez did something quite incredible in the Portuguese 125cc Grand Prix 2010. It will be remembered for the 17-year-old crashing en route to take his place on the grid, completely trashing the bike but being able to nurse it back into the pits.
His mentor, former 125cc champion Emilio Alzamora, was standing on the grid looking over the heads of others waiting to see the number 93 bike hove into view, but there was nothing. Already, alarm bells were ringing as team members sprinted up the track to the grid with a new set of bodywork to try and fix the Derbi.
But Marc had decided to sacrifice his front-row starting position and come into the pits. That would mean he'd have to do the warm-up lap in last position and then start the race start dead last, but at least he'd have the chance to let the guys fix the bike.
There was carbon-fibre hanging off it, no brake lever, a crumpled-up exhaust and the seat section all damaged. It would have taken a dealer in the street a week just to get the parts ordered, never mind fitted. You've never seen so many people work on such a small motorbike. It was a sea of people, all arms waving and leaping mechanics, as they ripped bits off it.
Marc's championship lead was still 12 points, but could they get the bike out to the end of pitlane in the next five minutes and give him a chance of limiting the damage to his championship aspirations?
'This day was incredible… maybe one of the most amazing days of my life' – Aki Ajo
They got the rider out of the way and let the boys get going. In all my years of being a rally mechanic at Prodrive in school holidays and then working on British and World Rally Championship events later, I've never seen something get fixed so quickly. It was a staggeringly short deadline, but they did it, rolling him down to the end of pitlane in time for the warm-up lap.
However, this was a shortened 23-lap race that now just needed nine laps to get a result after the first part of the race was rained off. Now half an hour later, the track had slightly dried, but did Marc have the right tyres on? What was that big grey cloud in the background going to do? Were the slicks going to be the right choice? Maybe it would rain and he'd look a right fool – hell, his championship rival Pol Espargaró had taken wets, convinced it was going to dump it down.
Starting 17th and dead last, he was fourth by the first corner. And you did read that right. Bolting ahead with Nico Terol and Bradley Smith, he was within a chance of the title being kept alive if he was third, so the team held out the board saying '3rd OK'.
He ignored that and got second, prompting '2nd OK'.
That was on the start of the last lap, in which he led in a truly fantastic battle with Terol, the pair passing each other four times for Marc to win it by by 0.15 seconds.
Twenty-five minutes earlier, he was upside-down in the gravel, breaking levers and bodywork… Amazing.
Aki Ajo is the team boss who won the 125cc title in 2008 with Frenchman Mike di Meglio, but he's just lost for words as MM93 goes into the final race of the season with 10 wins from 16 races and a 17-point lead, with 25 up for grabs in Valencia this weekend.
Ako, can you sum up what we’ve just seen?
This day was incredible… maybe one of the most amazing days of my life, but there were many shit moments along the way!
The weather hasn’t helped, has it?
First of all, the cancelled practices and wet conditions, then today it was dry without any testing in the dry… then the race start and the rain coming made everyone all nervous.
Toby Moody
What the team did to get that bike back up and running was extraordinary…
[With] the crash on the sighting lap, we felt that the championship was gone, but the team did verrry verrry [you have to say that like a Finn with the rolling of their Rs] nice work changing so many parts in a few minutes. I don't know how many parts they changed – exhaust, levers, fairing, seat, handlebars, everything – but I was so worried that something was not working or something was still open, a screw or something… but we were so lucky he could get to the start.
It was like a rally service area at one point with all hands from the garage trying to fix the bike – almost chaos in fact…
Today, I was so happy, as there were some other mechanics from other teams helping us. It was a big group… sometimes there can be too many people!
There was a lot of debris coming out of that bodywork, wasn’t there?
I'm from Finland. I'm a rally person, so no problem if there was some gravel in the bike!
The Ajo Motorsport squad have cool heads, but Marc seemed to be doing everything to test the team’s nerves!
Perhaps, yes! It maybe looks like that, but Marc is very concentrated and, of course, in this situation, he's 17 years old and it can make people nervous, but I like to work with him because we are all calm and try to concentrate on our work. He's like that, too.
By ignoring the pitboards, he was making his own race strategy, though, wasn’t he?
In the end, it was his decision to race like hell. I said to him before that second race, "Marc, we are just collecting some points and then we go to Valencia...” I knew that he would want to win whatever we said, but it was more important to keep him calm before the race, and I think we did that.
Valencia next weekend, then… What's the plan?
We need to remember that our job is not done. There’s still a lot of work and we need a lot of luck, so still we need a good clean weekend.
You probably need a drink after this one… ?
I'm going direct from Lisbon to Helsinki tonight, but my family are with me, so maybe I’ll have a drink on the plane home. Actually, I think that I'm going to be sleeping by the time I'm home. What a day… [Laughs, and then picks up the bottle of champagne that hasn't even got the cork taken out because Marc's too young to drink at 17] I don't think I'll wait long to take the top off this…
Want more?
- Read Marc's own blog from the weekend here
- Get more inside gossip from Portugal here
- Look ahead to Cheste here
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