Marquez confirms he warned Hadjar against returning too soon
Hadjar did not decide to skip the Dutch Grand Prix alone. Marc Marquez has confirmed the Red Bull rookie asked him, and that Jerez shaped every word of his answer.
Hadjar sat out at Zandvoort with a wrist injury, opening the door for a stand-in at Red Bull. He had already hinted that an outside opinion helped push him towards withdrawing. Speaking ahead of the Aragon MotoGP round, Marquez confirmed he was that voice.
What did Marquez actually tell Hadjar?
The two men share a physio, which is how the contact came about in the first place.
"Hadjar contacted me," Marquez said.
"I'm not a doctor, of course, but I gave him some advice because for a rider, this kind of situation is sometimes incredibly difficult."
Notably, Marquez framed it less as a medical question and more as a mental one. The hardest part is not the pain in the wrist. It is accepting that the weekend is already gone.
"Sometimes you think, 'OK, maybe I can race.' But it's hard to accept saying, 'Ok, I'm going to miss this race and I'm going to prepare as best I can for the next one.'"
Why does Marquez think missing one race is the smaller risk?
Few people in motorsport have more standing on this subject. Marquez spent years rebuilding a career that a single rushed comeback nearly ended, and that experience sat behind every word of the advice he passed on.
"I learned from my own experience that missing a race doesn't change the course of your life, whereas aggravating your injury by returning too soon can have very serious consequences."
The Jerez crash still shapes his thinking
Marquez broke his arm at Jerez in 2020 and returned far too quickly, triggering a chain of operations and lost seasons that cost him the best years of his prime. That is the outcome he wanted Hadjar to avoid.
"My life has changed a lot since I was injured in Jerez. I just wanted to give Isack this advice."
So did Hadjar make the right call?
Marquez has no doubt about it.
"And I think he made the right decision because he has a long career ahead of him."
For Hadjar, sitting out a home-continent race in his breakthrough season was a bruising call to make. On the evidence of Marquez's own history, it was also the cheap one. The rookie loses one weekend of points. He does not lose the wrist, and he does not lose the years that follow.
Related: Hadjar Set to Miss Dutch GP & Lawson Returns to Red Bull?
