#no of podiums during that time span: 1 (rins pol zarco redding miller) 2 (cc dani) 3 (petrux jlo) 4 (vale) 5 (marc) 6 (dovi)

[batsplat]

I was gonna ask you to rank Marc’s cota and sachsenring wins and then thought there’s really not much to rank them on cause he kinda won them pretty convincingly each time (2016 was pretty good) and the 2021 wins always have a special place in my heart but I’m not sure how else to rank them unless it’s like how dominantly he won them? Kinda wild that he had 3 cheat code tracks tho like that just sounds fake but Cota, Sachsenring and Aragon basically had is name on the P1 trophy every year (Aragon not until the 2016-19 run tho)

(Also just watched Brno 2017, man he’s not good in full wet races but you put him in a flag to flag and its hilarious cause comms are like oh he’s switching already oh look at him go he’s gonna win it now and it’s the same every time) (Although him getting P3 in his rookie year at France in a full wet race he did good)

yeah tbh I could't rank marc's wins at those circuits by any metric because quite frankly I don't remember most of them and am not particularly inclined to rewatch any of them for extra insight. sachsenring's still a bit better at cota - the only marc cota win I remember enjoying was 2017, but that was entirely because of the whole zarco/valentino/dani drama. don't even remember seeing marc

with sachsenring... yeah, I mean, 2016's pretty fun, felt extremely plot armour-y, marc makes a dicey bike swap call that ends up paying off big time. the main reason he makes that call iirc is because he'd sent himself to the shadow realm a couple laps earlier and was down the order anyway - which to me is actually one of the most interesting elements of his f2f wins. a lot of them are obviously based on perfect tactical execution but to some extent there's also some remarkable luck at play. taking a gamble because the race wasn't going his way and it just consistently paying off. the heavens are looking out for that man. anyway, incredible scam win

um... 2017 was actually not too bad, yamaha satellite rider folger does a pretty handy job at keeping the pressure on marc for as long as he does. I also vaguely remember 2018 being reasonably watchable, kinda the last jorge/valentino battle and valentino actually puts in a pretty impressive effort to chase after marc. I liked what he said in the presser about having studied what folger had done, how nobody had told folger yamaha was supposed to be mid at the sachsenring (to paraphrase), old man's still doing his homework. apart from that... the most memorable thing about 2014 were the pit lane shenanigans. I cannot remember a single thing about 2019 apart from dovi being in a bad mood that weekend. 2021 is one of those races that is entirely dependent on context - like, I was tense while watching it at the time, but if it had been any other year... it obviously wasn't exactly a stunning race

and it's a neat calling card!! the only real equivalent you've got is casey at phillip island. valentino technically also has a couple streaks to his name (seven at mugello, six at rio, five at phillip island) - but those have a completely different vibe to marc's and casey's in that most of them aren't exactly dominant. marc having this kind of margin over the field at several different tracks is pretty unique. it's actually a bit of a shame that we never quite got to see if dani at his best would've had something for marc at the sachsenring. dns in 2013, in 2014 the track conditions were always going to favour marc, 2015 I suppose but dani really wasn't in good form after his injury absence earlier in the season... and eventually his level just dipped anyway. idk if he could've beaten marc... but he really WAS excellent at that track, had won there 2010-12. the 2013 injury was awful timing in the context of his season and it wasn't ultimately a race that marc won by a crazy margin. idk! would've liked to see it!

one mildly interesting plot point in the next couple years is following marc's performances at those tracks - given that cota/sachsenring did also always feel like honda heartland. they suited both marc AND the bike. and yeah, you'd still expect him to run away with the victories at all those tracks, especially now we've seen his ominous aragon performance. but idk, that's one of the most fun aspects of manufacturer changes - you actually get more data points about how much the performance profiles are determined by bike or rider. for a currently relevant example, I've always thought that marc's a better rider at like,, qatar than he is at sepang. the headline stats are fairly similar, but it's about how the comparisons with other honda riders shake out. honda barely ever wins at qatar, they've done it only three times - once way back in 2004, can't remember anything about that race, once in 2011 courtesy of casey but that's one of HIS best tracks, and once in 2014 courtesy of marc to start off his win streak. whereas sepang is a track honda has a far better record at. unfortunately marc's only ever had one decent direct teammate comparison, but this is dani's record at the two respective tracks:

which you can also only read so much into, because dani himself is clearly a bit of a sepang specialist and doesn't particularly love qatar. but next year we get a lot more data!! finally! different manufacturer AND a decent teammate to serve as a baseline. in general marc's way more fun to watch at his bogey tracks than his specialist ones, so those are the circuits I'm more interested in his record at than the yearly cota walkover. always curious to see how he gets on at those... guess we'll have another chance to do so in a couple weeks time lol

as for the wet weather thing, again I do want to stress that marc isn't BAD in full wet conditions. at all. he doesn't have the same margin over the field as he does in mixed conditions, but the thing about wet races is that they are kind of supposed to make things a bit weird. it's always going to be luck of the draw to some extent - which is what makes marc's f2f record so remarkable because it's so dominant. in general, prime marc isn't racking up an obscene number of race wins in most of his title winning seasons - bar 2014 and 2019, which just happened to also have zero full wet races. so there have been wet races where some riders were just fully going at it and he settled for safer positions for championship reasons, like assen 2016, sepang 2017. and other wet races where he comes extremely close to snatching the win, like motegi 2017 - where he was also going up against one of the very best wet weather riders this century. and other wet races came late in the season and he just chucked it down the road for vibes, like sepang 2016, valencia 2018. and other wet races he was riding close behind an italian championship contender and putting them under sustained pressure for much of the race, before over-extending himself and crashing. of which there have been one or two instances

he's never dominated in full wet conditions before, no donington 2005's or silverstone 2011's on his resume, but also. the distinction between f2f and 'full wet' is also a bit arbitrary, because by definition races classified as f2f will more often than not feature some wet tyre action. at times in heavy rain. it's useful to put it in a spreadsheet and compare the two categories because it'll probably give you a general sense of where exactly marc shines and where he doesn't shine quite so much - but like with most of these things, you do need a lot of context. for instance, dani has three 'full wet' wins to marc's one. obviously, dani is not a better wet weather rider than marc. f2f as a category of races contains a lot of variety... marc has a quirky record in that you really wouldn't think he'd be so much radically better in f2f than he is in wet, which is why I like to point it out now and again. there's a small number of top riders who do definitely have a better record than him when the track is completely soaked (dovi, casey, valentino), but like. high bar. the le mans 2013 podium isn't in any way an aberration. he's good in the wet