MotoGP | Marquez: “Less effort than expected, but tomorrow will be a nightmare”

In France, Marc Marquez had defined Friday as the worst of his career in Ducati. He had not yet arrived in Barcelona. In his home race, the eight-time world champion struggled again, failing for the second time in a row to reach direct Q2. However, the Gresini rider feels more optimistic at Montmelo, where he finished Friday in 12th position.

If the time attack relegated him to Q1, the pace seemed decidedly good. Furthermore, Marquez arrived in Barcelona with the awareness of not being able to perform at his best. Historically, Montmelo is not particularly congenial to the multiple champion, but he was surprised to be less delayed than he thought: “What we expected happened. Obviously we tried to avoid it, but we expected to suffer here in Barcelona. We struggled less than we thought, because I feel good on the race pace and with the medium tires. It’s also true that in the time attack we lost Q2 by only a tenth. But tomorrow will be the worst session, the nightmare session of the weekend.”

“Here, in fact, I struggle a bit when entering corners,” explained Marquez, going into detail about this weekend’s weak points. “One of my strong points is braking, and here it becomes my weak point. So we need to understand the balance of the bike well. What to improve? Both the riding style and the bike. My style is definitely particular and works on most tracks. But there are three or four circuits on the calendar where it works less. We have to understand well tomorrow, this morning I felt very good, my style worked well. So we will need to work on both aspects.”

However, the rider from Cervera experiences low grip conditions on the Ducati for the first time and feels good despite the difficulties: “Similar to that of another bike. When you have little grip, you have to be careful. If you leak at the inlet you will open more gas at the outlet and then the problems become more and more serious. But even with little grip, with the Ducati I feel like it’s not as bad as I’m used to here. So I feel good.”

“It’s different from the sensations at Le Mans, because in France we knew where the problem was. Today we had our pace, so we need to understand where the problem is. On Friday at Le Mans we knew that having put another step it would work. Here, however, we need to understand,” he explained.

Half a second away from the top, Marquez will aim to get into Q2 in tomorrow’s “nightmare session”. The qualifying result will be crucial for the approach to the race, which will be more or less positive based on the starting position: “The spirit? It depends on the qualification. If we can do a good qualifying and start from the third row, for example, our potential is to do fifth, sixth or seventh at the moment. Not better, but it’s a good result at Montmelo, because it seems that the KTMs and Aprilias work better. But it’s a different track and you need more balance.”

“Here we struggle more than on any other track, but we are not far away. Qatar, Montmelo and I would say Malaysia and Indonesia are the tracks where I suffer the most. But things change with this bike, so we’ll see. It seems like it’s these three or four leads. But what I can say for sure is that this is one of the worst,” she concluded.