Marc Marquez "accepts" penalty, "but coming together with Bastianini played a part"

Marc Marquez said he accepts the 16-second post-race penalty for failing to meet the minimum tyre pressure in Sunday’s Dutch MotoGP.

The Gresini rider already realised he was in danger of running too low, for too long, in the cooler Sunday temperatures when he let Fabio di Giannantonio pass him for third place on lap 8 of the 26-lap race.

With Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin escaping, Marquez hoped that by following another rider, rather than leading the pack in fresh air, he could raise his front tyre pressure for the required 60% grand prix distance.

The plan may have worked without a late pass and contact from Enea Bastianini, which sent Marquez wide at Turn 1 on lap 21, causing his front tyre pressure to drop as he rejoined and got back up to speed.

The #93 expected Bastianini to get a 'drop one-position' penalty for the move.

The Gresini team are understood to have made their case to the FIM Stewards, that the aggressive act of another rider caused Marquez to fall short of the 60% legal-pressure laps, but there are currently no mitigating factors allowed.

As such, Marquez - who crashed on lap two of the Saturday Sprint - received the automatic 16-second penalty, dropping him from fourth to tenth in the results and costing him seven world championship points.

“Unfortunately, even if by very little, we’re outside the technical parameters regarding tyre pressure and therefore we accept the penalty,” Marquez said. 

“It’s really a shame to leave here with such few points: we could have scored two fourth place finishes but… 

"The coming together with Bastianini surely played a part but we’re not looking for excuses, I was playing well with tyre pressure until that moment. 

"Let’s wrap up this weekend and turn our focus on Germany.”

Marquez's crew chief Frankie Carchedi wrote on X that: "We were 0.01 out for 1 lap, however we have the data to understand why it was registering lower than it should have been."

Carchedi had also forecasted such a low-pressure scenario if a rider runs off track, during a February interview with Crash.net:

“One of the great things to see in our sport is if a rider has gone off and then fights back through the field,” Carchedi said at the Sepang test.

“What will happen now is if somebody crashes or goes off track, they're going to be under the tyre pressure. So they might have the most amazing race ever, come through the field and then you disqualify them at the end?

“I'm sure everyone will be coming up with alarms and lights [to warn a rider if they are low during a race]. But what can you do, suddenly slow down and let everyone overtake you?

“You don't want to see anything like that. Everyone's working on it and I hope that something can be found.”

The planned disqualification penalty for low tyre pressure in 2024 was subsequently swapped for a 16-second penalty (8-seconds for a Sprint).

But the problem of a rider only failing to reach the 60% of legal laps because they ran off track or fell - especially if the incident was due to the actions of another competitor - hasn’t yet been addressed.