As part of the post-race debrief podcast by The Race, veteran journalist and MotoGP insider Simon Patterson was on site in COTA and said that Marquez looked "defeated" throughout the weekend.

Speaking with fellow co-hosts Matt Beer and Val Khorounzhiy, Patterson gave the following assessment of the Ducati star's weekend at the USA Grand Prix:

"I've never seen Marc look as defeated as he looked this weekend." He said, "He looked beaten. He looked like a guy that it just wasn't working for him, and I think he came here expecting that it would be Marc Marquez comes to COTA, and we all know that old story, and the crash on Friday he kind of shrugged off [...] then it just got worse and worse. [...] In the race, when he hit Diggia, he looked like a guy that was trying way too hard to perform at a circuit where he knew he needed a result."

When speaking about Marc's injury, Patterson had a different perspective to the others, who still believed he was feeling the effects of his Mandalika crash with Marco Bezzecchi.

"I don't think he's injured, I think he's unfit." said Patterson, "I think he's still paying the price for a winter of not being able to train properly. I think he's healed, he's lost muscle, he's lost strength and he's just getting older and stiffer. We see him a lot in the paddock kind of doing like shoulder exercises while he's waiting for his media and stuff like that."

If Patterson's assessment is correct, and Marquez just needs to return to full fitness to be back at his best, then the postponement of the Qatar Grand Prix should certainly work in his favour.

However, it seems that Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi has a slightly different view of the team's current situation.

Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi has called on his other riders to step up to the challenge, rather than leave it all up to Marquez. Read the full story of Tardozzi's interview here.