Three crashes in Four sprints: Marc Marquez’s Saturday results are not very exciting if we think about how many times he (didn’t) see the checkered flag. And yet, despite the other times, in the Red Bull Ring Sprint the Gresini rider tried, he crashed to try to win.
If you look at the other side of the coin, it is a step forward compared to usual: when he fell a few laps from the end he was chasing Pecco Bagnaia, launched towards victory. The eight-time world champion, second, began to see the silhouette of his future teammate increasingly larger, but right there he made a mistake.
A fall due to excessive enthusiasm, but that does not take away the smile from the driver from Cervera, who in the Sprint of the Austrian Grand Prix felt for the first time in a long time able to really compete: “The cause of the fall was the risk I took. After qualifying I said that the others were only half a step ahead, so in the Sprint I took a risk”.
“I saw myself with the strength to get to Pecco and it had been a while since that happened,” explained the Gresini rider after the Sprint. “Did I take a risk and it went badly? Yes. Today I let myself be carried away by the desire to be in front, but I am happy. These crashes don’t tire me out that much because I go in front. If I had gotten to Pecco, tomorrow’s goal would have been different. But now I have to secure the podium, which I think is doable.”
Thinking about the potential and the fact that he could have fought for the win, you almost feel like kicking your heels in. But Marquez isn’t discouraged, on the contrary: “I was too optimistic, it was like an easy podium, I was doing very well. In the first part of the race, I said to myself ‘Okay, I’ll stay calm’. The riders in front were half a step ahead of me. Yesterday it was one, today half a step.”
“In the last laps I felt it was time to attack, I recovered a bit because I was riding super smoothly and then I tried to attack a bit more, but I was too optimistic at Turn 3. On that lap I had already done the fastest T1 of the race and yes, I pushed too much,” explains Marc, who describes the crash when he was just behind Bagnaia.
The Red Bull Ring, however, betrayed several riders, who in these two days tasted the asphalt in the various sessions. Marc did not escape unscathed, who also recognizes the difficulties of finding the limit on a complicated track: “It is quite difficult to understand the limit of the track, especially when you ride behind the others, because in the morning with the cooler temperatures, only 15 degrees less on the track, the riding style is completely different. Today, in the race, I locked the front a lot and it was much more difficult. It’s normal”.
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