Over recent weeks there has been a lot of comments made about Marc Marquez being injured and out for a few events, comments insinuating that winning the championship this year basically won’t make the world champion a world champion because Marquez is sidelined for a while.

His brother Alex has also been criticised, he’s not good enough to be on a Repsol Honda, and the negative comments go on and on and on. It’s easy to forget Alex is not Marc, isn’t it? Well, no, not really. Alex has his own Grand Prix pedigree and has his own path to follow that is not that of the same path as his older brother.

There is a point to the opening two paragraphs, the point is Marc Marquez made a mistake in Jerez, he fell, he got hurt, and he is now on the sidelines while he heals. No one sabotaged his bike; no one pushed him off; he did it on his own. It’s part of racing; riders get injured, Valentino Rossi and Jack Miller both broke their legs a few years back, Jorge Lorenzo, Assen 2013, Dani Pedrosa has a diagram made of him of just to stress how much he was injured.

If you wrestle a 300bhp motorcycle round tracks as fast as you can, at some point you’re going to get injured no matter who you are, at some point you’ll most likely break a bone or two. It’s part of championships; riders get hurt, it could easily swing the other way toward the end of the year.

Imagine if you had put a bet down that Alex Marquez would be ahead of Marc Marquez after two rounds in the championship? But he is and although it would be unlikely if Marc weren’t injured he is there on merit because Marc made a mistake, not Alex.

One thing I do know when Marc Marquez comes back into the fold is that he will have a point to prove and anyone of his championship contenders could be sidelined at any point. We could sit here forever and say so and so wouldn’t have won if so and so hadn’t been injured, but they were injured, and they did win, so whoever wins the 2020 world championship will fully be deserving of the title.