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As of this year, Marc Márquez has a new chief engineer in the pits, Frankie Carchedi. The British engineer took over from Santi Hernandez, who followed Marc for an impressive 11 seasons in his years at Honda.
Frankie was in the Suzuki box when Joan Mir won the world championship, in 2020 and then moved to the Gresini team alongside Fabio Di Giannantonio and, of course accompanied Marc in his Ducati debut at Valencia in late 2023 when Marquez in half a day had been able to take off the fourth fastest time overall in testing, only 171 thousandths from Maverick Vinales' best performance. Second of the eight Ducati riders.
After the first test Carchedi had spoken to Speedweek about the winter with Marc.
"We've been in touch quite a bit, all winter long, and we've just exchanged ideas ," he had said, " Now Marc has a better idea of what he might need, whether it's the position in the saddle or something else on the bike, so that he has everything ready for Sepang. The adaptation to the Desmosedici in Valencia Tuesday? What I can say is that when you get on this bike it takes a while to understand everything. With his experience and everything else, certain things happened a little faster. But you have to be careful; he wants to enjoy riding, he wants to be in front, and he just has to take it one step at a time. We have to try to take the first step and then, as a result, figure out how far we can go. The world title? There are 42 races and we saw how many injuries there were last year...these things should not even be thought about, at least until you leave three quarters of the season behind. The goal for now is to start at the best possible level for the first race in Qatar. From there we'll see where we stand and try to improve weekend after weekend."
Now, less than three months later, the British engineer has clearer ideas about the potential of the new pair.
"It was a good weekend, even compared to the pole on Saturday ," Carchedi explained after the Grand Prix, " I had zero fear, Marc was amazing. The way the track was, and when it's hot here the tire temperatures go up, when they were three in front it naturally went up a lot, then he caught Bezzecchi, passed him and it went down a little bit, and he had a chance to catch Pecco at this point. As Marc said, when you catch up to another rider, you have a lap or two to pass him, otherwise the temperature rises."
It would almost seem that the Spaniard now has the Desnosedici in hand.
"I wouldn't say it's 100 percent it's all set. From the first lap he was almost perfect. The new brake lever allowed him a little more margin in the braking. The 'adaptation is a difficult thing: in Portimao and Austin he had a fast pace, but there are so many things... The speed is there, but you have to fix the small things, his fast lap on the last pass shows that he was okay."
A relationship with a rider is not built in a few months, but it seems that the confidence between Frankie and Marc is growing.
"Actually with a rider like him it's not so difficult. Of course you have to understand. His system, and ours. He learned what from me and I from him. In the beginning we left the bike as it was, then in Portimao we made a small step and in Austin another step forward."
Automatic Translation by DeepL
