“If you try and do what Marquez does, it doesn’t end well” – Crutchlow

Cal Crutchlow has given insight into the truly unique style Marc Marquez has adopted on the Repsol Honda since he entered MotoGP, saying that imitating him would just lead to anyone else crashing.

As an HRC rider, Crutchlow has the privilege of being able to access Marquez’s telemetry but the Briton says the data only throws up so many clues as to why he can pedal the RC213V faster than anyone else.

Indeed, with Honda developing the machine towards the six-time MotoGP World Champion’s needs – often at the behest of other riders in the team – the RC213V is seen as a somewhat temperamental machine overall.

However, Crutchlow says it is Marquez’s ‘incredible talent’ that allows him to wring the most out of the bike confidently even when most other riders would crash using the same methods.

“Marc is this incredible talent, a great guy to work with, to be able to share a manufacturer and work together with,” he told BT Sport.

“It’s difficult to understand how he does it because he wins when it’s (the bike) not capable of winning. Do you know what I mean? The way he can control the bike, the moments that he has, the way he slides the bike, his use of the rear and front brake is something very, very incredible. 

“The one thing I will say is how much he can lock the front wheel. You could pick a 20-lap race, and I guarantee he can lock the front wheel going into a corner maybe three or four times as much as any other Honda rider does.”

“So it’s then about your brake control, or the way that he rides and the way that he uses the rear brake, things like that. We only see, on data, the deacceleration line. When that deacceleration line has a jagged bit in it, it’s the locking of the front wheel and then it obviously unlocks and goes back into line.”

"If you try and do what he does, it doesn’t end well..."

Expanding on that point, while Crutchlow says locking the front wheel through corners isn’t unusual for riders, he says no-one can do it at the excessive lean angle Marquez generates.

“Let’s say you have six of those spikes on the jagged line, he might have 15 into one corner or he might have one that is two metres long. But he’ll do that for 20 laps and still win the race, that’s just the way he rides. 

“To a normal person on the road, I wouldn’t say they wouldn’t know what’s going on… obviously we lock the front quite a lot of the time and we understand that’s the way it is. But the lean angle he can do it at, or the way – if the bikes straight – how he can control it, and not crash, is something very spectacular.

While Crutchlow insists Marquez isn’t ‘unbeatable’, he admits it will take another a rival with a wholly different style of riding to defeat him because imitating the Spaniard is just too risky.

“You know, it’s hard to get your head around. But he’s not unbeatable because he’s been beaten in certain races, but he’s an incredible, incredible talent. It’s good to learn off him in one extent. 

“But on the other hand you don’t want to learn off him because if you try and do what he does, it doesn’t end well. You’ve got to sometimes do some of the stuff he does, but filter out the stuff that you can’t do and go from there.”