Two weeks after the start of the season in Qatar, MotoGP restarts its engines for the first European stage of 2024, the Portuguese Grand Prix. Among the ups and downs of Portimao, we will have the opportunity to see confirmations, positive or negative surprises of what we were able to observe in Lusail, and among these there is Marc Marquez.
On Thursday in Portimao, the eight-time world champion is preparing to face his second race weekend with the Gresini team and tomorrow he will put himself to the test again with the Ducati. It will be the first time that Marc will take to the track with his new bike without first having carried out a test: “The approach for the weekend will be the same as in Qatar, the difference will be to go straight to the race weekend without going through the tests. This changes the plans a bit. Let's see if in Portimao I can start from the top 10 and move directly to Q2. This is the main goal. Other than that, let's see where we will be in a completely different restart.”
Win or not, Marc Marquez is always one of the great protagonists of the current MotoGP. His history and his palmarès speak for him, and for this reason many expectations had already been created about him in Qatar, no matter how much the Catalan tried to dampen them. What we saw in the first grand prix of the season demonstrated that, official or not, the objective is always to do the maximum: “The pressure is the same. The driver is happy if he gets on the podium, the team is happy if the driver gets on the podium, that's the goal of this team. Clearly, making the podium is better than making the top 5, winning is better than making the podium.”
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team, Marc Marquez, Gresini Racing, Aleix Espargaro, Aprilia Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“Being in a more playful atmosphere doesn't mean there isn't less pressure or that you don't have a certain ambition. The ambition is the same as in an official team, because we are here to fight for the best possible result. But it's also true that there are fewer people on the team and it's more familiar. The good atmosphere within the team is a great help, but the culture is also very different, we are talking about Japanese and Italians. But every atmosphere is good if the results are good,” continues Marquez.
The Portuguese Grand Prix is only the second race of the 2024 season, yet we are already starting to talk about the transfer market. The latest blow was the announcement of Fermin Aldeguer joining Ducati in 2025, a situation that creates an inevitable chain reaction. Marc Marquez knows something about this, and just last year he triggered a crazy transfer market by signing with Gresini.
“Obviously my situation is completely different from the past,” explains Marc when presented with the option of being able to aspire to a place in the Ducati factory team. “Once, in December I already had the contract signed for the following year. Now I'm in no rush, I just want to focus on myself and do my best on the track. I know that if I have fun and am fast, I will have a better chance of choosing a seat. But, until now, I just want to focus on my work, like I did in Qatar. Some races will go well, others won't… I will only give my 100% because I know that in sport the present counts, not the past.”
The present tells that Marc has a Ducati, the most coveted and complete motorcycle on the grid. However, he doesn't have the most updated version, but races with the GP23, which however won the world championship last year with Pecco Bagnaia: “I have what I have and for me it's already better than what I had last year. Obviously, the GP24 beats it in some places, but the GP23 has the experience from last year and we need to take advantage of it. I still have to discover the full potential of the Ducati, I have to understand how to fully exploit it.”
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