MotoGP | Marquez: “Pramac is a good team, but it's not official”

The home race always has a special flavor and Marc Marquez knows this well, as he found extra motivation in the support of his fans to get through to Q2 on Friday of the Spanish Grand Prix. In Jerez, the eight-time world champion shone with the GP23, taking the third fastest time, just 143 thousandths of a second behind the record holder Pecco Bagnaia.

“We started on the right foot, and in the home race it helps you to be less stressed”, began the Gresini standard bearer in the usual meeting with the media”. “In the morning we got along very well, in the afternoon we stayed there and the others came closer. The important thing is that we are in the top five group, that was the goal we set ourselves. As always, qualifying will affect both the Sprint and the race we can do.”

The Desmosedici once again proves to be the most complete bike on the grid, however everything is not always that simple and the rider from Cervera has already identified the aspects to improve in Jerez, where he faces his first home grand prix as a Ducati rider: ” In T2 and T4 we need to improve, but we know why and we will focus on this area. We will see tomorrow what capacity for evolution each one will have and what qualifications there will be. In the morning I felt very good, but in the afternoon a little less with the wind. Then with the rear tires someone suffered in the morning and someone else in the afternoon, but we remained constant.”

“This is one of the Fridays where I felt better during the season and it's the result of evolution. I have more and more clear ideas about the setup. The Ducati is the most complete bike on the grid, there are bikes that go better on one track and worse on another, but the Ducati is consistent everywhere and this is what is needed in a championship. I am now completely adapted to the Ducati, we just have to find those secrets to have a good lap time, at the moment Bagnaia and Martin are the riders who best interpret this bike because they know it well”, explained Marquez, who now seems to have lost his Honda habits and is a Ducati rider in all respects.

Ducati is the brand he indicated as a possible future. In a market that moves very quickly, Marquez will be an important player (as he was last year). Leave Gresini to go to Pramac and have a GP24? He doesn't see it as an option at the moment: “Pramac is an excellent satellite team that has a factory bike and has shown that it has the ability to fight for the world championship.”

At the moment, however, he prefers to focus on the present and on work on his blue GP23: “We made a change to the brake, to the front lever, and other more technical things. If there are problems that we didn't have today, we have already thought of solutions. If we don't need to use them this weekend, we'll keep them for testing on Monday.” Not just technique, you will also have to watch your opponents during the weekend: “In the end you push yourself and for me with this format you take a lot of risks except in FP1, where in fact there are fewer crashes. But the afternoon test is madness, you go out, you have to set the pace, prepare the time attack. We take a lot of risks, but at the same time the hot track with this cold air betrayed the riders a bit, and tomorrow with the lower temperatures even more so.”