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Left, right: can Marquez march to another Aussie win?
Marc Marquez is fast everywhere, but has a special affinity with Phillip Island, like every other anti-clockwise track …
My favourite type of track? Thanks for asking …
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It was a bit of light-hearted fun at the end of the pre-event press conference at this year's Austrian Grand Prix, where a number of MotoGP riders were handed a sheet of paper and a marker to draw their ideal track. Jorge Lorenzo's was simple, Valentino Rossi's more elaborate, Andrea Dovizioso's a mixture of both. Marc Marquez? The Spaniard drew an oval, added a directional arrow, and wrote five words: 'Left corners and very slippery'. Those in attendance laughed, but as Marquez's records show, the joke is on everyone else.
The 25-year-old Spaniard has done plenty of winning in the premier class since joining MotoGP in 2013; his victory last time out in Japan secured a fifth world title in his first six seasons, the victory his 43rd in that span. They're astonishing stats in themselves, but crunch the numbers a little further and you discover where he really makes his rivals pay. Because for Marquez, with his flat-track dirt-bike racing background, it's right to go left.
Marquez won his second MotoGP race in Australia last year
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Phillip Island, home of this Sunday's Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, is one of just five of the 19 circuits featured on the 2018 calendar that goes 'left', in that it has more left-hand corners than right-handers. And when a circuit runs anti-clockwise, time seems to be up on the chances of Marquez's rivals, none of whom have been able to hold a candle to him.
Before the race in Aragon this year (a left-hand track, where Marquez won), cycleworld.com analysed his stats at all tracks, which make for scary reading for his rivals at the 'left' ones. Before Aragon, Marquez had won 39 per cent of his MotoGP starts, and 25 per cent of those on clockwise, right-handed circuits – a formidable set of numbers by themselves. On left-hand tracks, that goes up to 71 per cent – and pole position 84 per cent of the time.
Remarkably, Marquez has never been beaten in MotoGP in the USA between the Circuit of the Americas, Indianapolis and Laguna Seca; all left-hand tracks, where he's a perfect 10-for-10. At the Sachsenring in Germany, the undulating, twisty track that features 10 lefts and just three rights, he's taken pole and won in all six visits on MotoGP machinery, and won for the three years before that in the Moto2 and 125cc classes. At Aragon (10 lefts, 7 rights), he's won four times in six years, crashing out the other two times. And at the season finale in Valencia (nine lefts, five rights), he's been on the podium every year, won in 2014, and secured his 2013 and 2017 titles at the compact Spanish circuit.
How that does that shape his chances for Australia and Phillip Island, where seven of the 12 corners are left-handed? He won both no-holds-barred Australian GP classics in 2015 and 2017, crashed from the lead in 2014 and 2016, and was disqualified while leading in 2013 after being black-flagged for not changing tyres at half-distance of a race where pit stops on safety grounds were mandatory. He's been on pole at the Island each of the past four years, set the fastest lap of the race twice, and has the circuit record lap of 1min 28.108secs in 2013.
The seaside circuit has the Spaniard in his element
© Gold & Goose/Red Bull Content Pool
All of which is why, with a fifth MotoGP championship in his pocket before he gets to Australia, he has to be considered the favourite for a track he holds in special esteem.
"It's one of my favourite circuits, I’m always fast there and I'm enjoying a lot, it’s an incredible track," Marquez says.
"It’s difficult because it's very physical, with many hard and fast changes in direction, but I enjoy it a lot every year."
When those changes of direction are more lefts than rights, it's easy to see why …
This story was originally published on motogp.com.au and has been reproduced with permission.
