A difficult start to the weekend for Marc Marquez at the Red Bull Ring, at least looking at the first free practice session. However, the eight-time world champion managed to straighten out the Austrian Grand Prix right away, because he went from 18th in the morning session to fourth place, with direct Q2, in the afternoon.
The timesheets do not do justice to the potential of the Gresini rider, who was affected by a shower of yellow flags displayed just when he was making his time attacks. Many times were cancelled for the Cervera rider, who found himself in the backup positions at the end of FP1. In addition, he had encountered some problems that were resolved for the afternoon session.
“If you look at the times that wiped me out, I would have been fourth,” Marquez stressed at the end of Friday at the Red Bull Ring. “I didn’t have much pace, but we know why and the team managed to sort everything out for the second session. We had a similar brake issue to Austin, but in the afternoon I was more consistent. If you start with a good base, the weekend changes completely.”
Marc Marquez, Gresini Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Staying in the saddle, keeping calm and working quietly was the key to gaining more and more confidence: since the beginning of the season, Marquez claims that starting well on Friday is already a big part of the work done for the weekend and today was confirmation of this: “One of the things that helped me today was taking things calmly, there were a lot of yellow flags, but I didn’t let it affect me. Not crashing and gaining confidence with a good setup allowed me to work on small details”.
Despite his confidence on Friday at the Red Bull Ring, the Gresini rider still doesn’t feel he’s in contention for the win. He claims he’s still behind his rivals, even though in Austria he closed the gap on the favourites, including Enea Bastianini, despite finishing ahead of him today: “I had the feeling I was two or three steps behind the leaders, but here we’re just one step behind. Are Bagnaia and Martin fast? Bastianini also had pace on used tyres, the GP24s are going very well, but we’re very close”.
The greatest sign of encouragement also comes from the fact that Marc didn’t need a slipstream to do his time. However, he doesn’t rule out looking for a tow if he needs it: “Today in the last run I managed to do the time alone, but if tomorrow I have to follow someone to stay ahead, I will do it. Today I felt good, I felt comfortable enough to do the time alone, I didn’t need that reference. Objective? I would sign to do a second row”.
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