Motorsport News: 'This time I won't rush my return from injury' - MotoGP champion Marquez

This weekend’s Styrian MotoGP is the fourth event Marquez has been forced to sit out – five if you include his DNF in the offending Jerez opener – but both he and Honda had previously intimated he’d begin along the road to recovery next time out in Misano, helped in part by the extended three-week break.However, it transpires Marquez’s fractured arm – which has now required two operations, the first insert a titanium plate into the arm and another to fix it when it sustained its own damage – is not healing as quickly as originally hoped, so much so it could take another three months to target a return to racing. While rivals have played down Marquez’s absence and shrugged off the impact it causes them directly, this new formal knowledge the Spaniard is ruling himself out of the a title fight he maintained such a strong grip on for the past few years, means the title fight takes on a very different look now.Indeed, while riders are well versed in the tropes of ‘we focus on our own race, we don’t think about the championship yet’, this breaking news brings home the fact it won’t be Marquez raising the title for only the second time in the last eight years.Even better is the fact the title race is wide open right now, with no rider able to get a proper grasp on momentum from the opening four races.