MotoGP | Marquez: “We finish with a good taste, but it was a negative weekend”

Probably not even Marc Marquez would have bet on a possible podium in today’s race at Sachsenring on Saturday morning. So, given how things were going, second place can be taken by looking at the glass half full.

But the German ups and downs are not just any track for him. He has won 11 times in his career, eight of them in MotoGP, so the rider from Cervera had already circled the German Grand Prix weekend in red, because he knew it represented a great opportunity to try to take home his first victory on the Ducati.

But on Friday afternoon everything immediately got complicated for him, with a violent highside at turn 11 from which he got up with a severe contusion to his side and a small fracture to a finger on his right hand. An accident that prevented him from taking the direct pass to Q2. In Q1 then he seemed to have what it takes to pass the cut, but he had to deal with the impeding of Stefan Bradl on the decisive lap and in this way he found himself 13th on the grid and on top of that physically bruised.

After a Sprint concluded in fifth place gritting his teeth, the eight-time world champion managed to climb back up to second place in the long race, bowing only to the new world championship leader Pecco Bagnaia, but also taking advantage of Jorge Martin’s fall in the final. The feeling, therefore, is of having wasted a good opportunity to find the success he has been missing since Misano 2021.

“It’s true that we leave with a good taste in our mouths, but it was a negative weekend from which we must learn. If I hadn’t had all these inconveniences, I would have been able to fight with Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin,” Marquez said immediately after the race.

In the final stages we saw him battle bravely first with Franco Morbidelli, with whom he also made contact at turn 1, and then with his brother Alex, from whom he stole second place in the final laps.

“I didn’t get nervous, but when I made contact with Morbidelli my head clicked. I overtook him because I was in a frenzy. And when I saw myself behind Alex I thought: ‘What do I do? Do I steal the podium from him? Do I try?’ Then Jorge fell and my thoughts became clear and we both managed to get on the podium.”

After the first nine races of the calendar, even if he has not yet found the appointment with the victory, the #93 is third in the World Championship, 56 points behind the leader Bagnaia. At the moment, however, the Spaniard sees it difficult to re-enter the race for the title.

“There are two riders faster than me. Yes, I might be able to beat them on some circuits, to fight, like in Le Mans and Jerez. But, if you look at the remaining races, I think the gap will increase even more,” he concluded.