MotoGP | Marquez: “I won’t give advice to Martin for the title, he’s a rival”

A year ago in Mandalika he announced his historic (and in some ways unexpected) move to the Gresini team, while this year Marc Marquez returns to Indonesia strong with two successes aboard the GP23 and is ready to get on the official Ducati team bike in 2025.

Before wearing red, the Cervera rider will face the last races with the Faenza team and he will do it with tranquility, knowing that he has already achieved the goals he had set himself at the beginning of the year: “My intention was to have a growing year, I have already achieved my goal that I had set myself for this season. So I will continue to have fun. This will be the key”.

“It is clear that you always want more, but I have achieved everything I wanted. Winning a race, a Sprint, podiums, poles… Now I just need to work on what costs the most effort, that is, making the difference with consistency. The title? I can say yes, but I will continue with my usual speech. I am missing something to fight, because when you depend on particular conditions or rain, you understand that you do not have everything to be able to fight. We proved it at Misano 2, in a normal weekend we were fourth and I was missing those two tenths that make the difference”, explained Marc on Mandalika Thursday.

The race in Indonesia will be a good test for the Gresini rider, who has never seen the checkered flag on this track until now. Marquez will arrive on Friday with several unknowns, considering that he will be facing the weekend for the first time with Ducati: “I have never finished the race in Indonesia, not even in 2022 was I able to do so with the very bad fall in the warm-up. We will try to understand our level here and the goal will be the top 4”.

“It’s not one of my favorite tracks, but it’s a track that I like and I’ve been at a normal level, not extremely good. But I’ll try to understand how I’ll go with the Ducati. If it rained on one of the three days we’d have a chance. But I saw that it’s not raining. Since Friday all three categories have been running and on Sunday the trajectory will have normal grip,” Marc says, cutting himself off from the fight for the win.

Despite the eight-time world champion continuing to keep a low profile, he arrives in Mandalika with a 60-point gap from leader Jorge Martin. Does he still have a chance of fighting for the title? Marc claims not, yet no one is cutting him out of the fight and the Gresini rider himself prefers not to give advice to his compatriot who leads the standings: “I won’t give him any advice, I won’t give it to current and future rivals. Does this mean I’m thinking about the world championship? No, but Martin is a current rival and one of the future ones. Why give advice to an opponent? I give it to my brother and that’s it”.

Of the two, Marc was chosen to join the official team from 2025, so much so that Martin has decided to sign with Aprilia for next year. Thus, the rider from Cervera tries to explain the reasons he imagines may have led the Borgo Panigale management to choose him and not the rider from Madrid: “I tried to be as professional as possible, giving my point of view with caution but with the experience I have in MotoGP”.

“But above all, to perform based on the results, the first part of the season was good, then there was a stumble in which we struggled to find a base that made me feel comfortable. Now we have found it and we are back close to the nearby riders. But there were races in which I was far away. Obviously I don’t have to answer this question. I was predisposed to go to the official team, I tried to work in the best possible way to have options, but they made the decision”, he concludes.