Marquez’s Assen MotoGP tyre pressure penalty highlights unfair rules flaw

Marc Marquez was only 0.01 bar outside of MotoGP’s minimum tyre pressure rule for one lap of the Dutch Grand Prix and feels contact with Enea Bastianini was to blame.

The Gresini Ducati rider finished fourth in Sunday’s 26-lap grand prix at Assen, but was later demoted to 10th after being hit with a post-race time penalty of 16 seconds for breaching MotoGP’s minimum front tyre pressure rule.

Marquez revealed he felt from the first lap that his tyre temperature was strangely low, and tried to control this by allowing VR46 rider Fabio Di Giannantonio to overtake him on lap eight in a bid to use his dirty air to bring the pressure back up.

While this helped, the rules breach came on lap 21 when Ducati’s Enea Bastianini overtook Marquez at Turn 1 and sent him off-track due to contact.

Needing to ride within the minimum limit of 1.8 bar for 15 laps (amounting to 60% of full race distance), Marquez missed this by one tour, with his pressure dropping 0.01 bar outside of the legal tolerance as he recovered from running off-track.

“0.01 for one lap,” Marquez responded when asked how much underneath the limit he was. “It’s a shame, but the rules are the rules.

“The only thing we were discussing with the stewards, for that reason it delayed the penalty, because as you saw in the race I started in a good way but suddenly I saw on the front there was something strange and the tyre pressure was super low.

“Then I let DiGia pass just to control the front pressure, and then I was there behind him all the race.

“I was controlling in a good way, I was inside. But what I didn’t expect was the contact with Enea, where he pushed me out.

“And when I was out that lap, I was one second slower and I didn’t push well in that Turn 3 and Turn 5, because I didn’t know how the tyre would be after coming from the run-off area.

“It dropped again, took two laps to come back and those two laps made me out of that minimum, which 15 laps today.”

This has highlighted a flaw with the rules. Marquez has flagged this to the FIM stewards, who seemingly agree with the eight-time world champion.

While he accepts his punishment, because it falls under the current regulatory framework, Marquez believes it should be tweaked for the future so that incidents which cause a rider to unintentionally breach the tyre pressure rules can be seen as…