Three reasons Marc Márquez can (and can't) win the MotoGP title

Nobody doubts Márquez has incomparable talent, but he spent eight months off the motorcycle, underwent three surgeries on his broken arm and had to come back from an undetected infection that delayed and complicated his recovery. Now he starts the 2021 season having missed the first two races, already 40 points behind Pramac Racing's Johann Zarco. Can he spot the field two races and still win the championship this year?

Lots of people have opinions. The majority seem to expect Márquez to come back and dominate straight away.

Will it happen? Maybe. Maybe not. Good arguments can be made both ways. In fact, that's what I'm about to do.

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Three reasons Marc Márquez will still win the 2021 championship

1. Nobody can match Márquez's consistency. 2020 was a fascinating MotoGP season because every week was unpredictable, but that was true largely because Márquez was absent. In 2019, he finished first or second in every race except the U.S. round, where he crashed. No one else in the field can muster that kind of consistency and it will allow Márquez to march back from his two-race deficit.
2. 2020 champion Joan Mir recorded a DNF in two of the first three races last year and still won the title. He finished fifth in the other race. So if Márquez finishes fifth this weekend at Portimão, he'll have the same number of points after three races as last year's champion did. If Mir can score 11 points in the first three races and still win the title, do you really think Márquez can't?
3. Márquez is the alien of our time and arguably the GOAT. He does things on a motorcycle that astound his fellow MotoGP riders — racers who are already among the two dozen most skilled road racers in a world of 7.8 billion people. Maybe he comes back at 80 percent of what he was, but in 2019 he scored 56 percent more points than second-place Andrea Dovizioso. If Márquez is a shadow of his former self, it's still a long enough shadow to cover the field.

Three reasons Marc Márquez won't win the 2021 championship

1. The MotoGP field is tighter than ever. The second race at Doha was the closest finish in MotoGP history among the top 15. The riders who finished in the points were separated by less than nine seconds after 22 laps. That closeness means that being even slightly off the peak of his game will put Márquez behind. Isn't it reasonable to expect he could lose a tenth of a second a lap from being away from competition for nearly a year? A tenth of a second per lap at the last race meant the difference between winning and finishing fifth, a difference of 14 points.
2. Márquez has alien-level talents but he's still human. He has escaped countless crashes that weren't crashes because he saved them in ways no other person in the world can save a motorcycle from crashing. But this time, he was human. He suffered a lot for it. Confidence is everything for those at the top level of racing and losing a year of his career could dent even Marc Márquez's confidence and skills. And again, even if he hesitates and loses just a tenth of a second a lap, that — along with missing two races — is enough to cost him a chance at the championship this year.
3. Márquez will crash again and now he'll be more fragile. Márquez is 28 — not old, by any standard — but he's closer to the end of his racing career than the beginning. The multiple injuries and subsequent infection in his arm may have weakened it permanently. If he has the strength and control he had before, and if there's no nagging memory of the past year's ordeal in his mind slowing him down just a tenth, he still may not be able to go back to his bulletproof life of walking away from crashes (or sprinting away, to hop on his spare bike) as he did before. New injuries may still derail his title hopes this year.

Which of these scenarios will play out? We'll start finding out this Sunday.