The feelings after Friday’s free practice were good and the conditions to compete with the leading riders were all there: Marc Marquez had already warned that he did not feel capable of fighting for the victory, but the podium was a realistic goal. However, he did not take into account a mistake in qualifying, which led to a crash when he was completing an excellent lap that would have allowed him to start well ahead of ninth place on the grid.
The mistake he made on Saturday morning paid for it in today’s Sprint, where he couldn’t get beyond fifth place thanks to a last-lap overtaking of Pedro Acosta. The Gresini rider was nevertheless the author of a comeback on a track where overtaking is difficult, so he maintains that the progression can be read from both a positive and a negative perspective.
“Starting ninth and finishing fifth has two readings: if you are ambitious, you start ninth and say that fifth is fine because it is a track where it is very difficult to overtake,” explained Marquez, who however always wants more. “But since I am always self-critical, I penalized, or rather, I destroyed my weekend in Q2. With this mistake when there were two corners left at the end of my lap, I would have placed myself on the second row. We compromised our options both in the Sprint and in the race on Sunday. But we limited the damage with this fifth place.”
Once again, Marc wasted an opportunity, making a mistake that will cost him dearly in terms of the race. He will start ninth in tomorrow’s race and explains his crash in Q2 as follows: “I came out of the previous corner almost eight kilometres per hour faster and leaned a bit more, arriving very fast. It all comes from the previous corner, because in FP2 I was riding with a 28-lap tyre and then, with the new tyre, the references change completely. This led to the crash.”
In the race, however, he showed his claws, demonstrating his tenacity and desire for revenge after the mistake in qualifying. So, one after the other, he began to overtake his rivals, but some were tougher to overtake, like Brad Binder: “That was the most difficult to overtake, it was the overtaking done without him making a mistake. There was a moment in the middle of the curve where I thought ‘either I stop the bike or we end up in Race Direction’ (laughs, ed.). We stopped it. The overtaking I was trying to do was very difficult, but we managed it and those who go to the outside always have something to lose. On this circuit, with the same pace, it is very difficult to overtake and it can only be done this way”.
Marc Marquez, Gresini Racing
Photo credit: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Adding to the spectacle was Pedro Acosta, who defended himself from Marc Marquez’s attacks, only to then have to surrender to the experience of the eight-time world champion, who on the last lap launched the decisive attack that allowed him to take fifth place: “That’s one of the points where you go fast, I think you can even reach 250 km/h. I was preparing to overtake because I was arriving a little faster than Acosta to be able to do it at Turn 14, but I saw the hole a little earlier (between turns 11 and 12). I think he made a small mistake, the bike moved and I definitely had to take a bit of gas off. I took advantage and then I used my experience to defend the position.”
Despite the mistake in qualifying that forced him to limit the damage, Marquez is satisfied with what he saw during the weekend. Speed and good sensations are there, therefore the Gresini rider expects to continue on this path to be able to return to being constantly in front and fight with the leading riders always: “The important thing is that the speed is there and we have a similar pace to that of the top four, but these small mistakes are the ones we want to avoid from now until the end of the season. They will happen again, but this time it shouldn’t have happened. But the continuity of having speed, pace and good sensations continues to be there”.
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