The Honda rider started from second on the grid and after this year’s previous races it looked like he would put on a show in the Mugello Sprint. However, the long and fast Tuscan track gave him no escape and, as the eleven laps of the race went by, Marc Marquez’s Honda was ousted to seventh place.
In the morning, during Q2, Marquez had managed to move into second position behind poleman Pecco Bagnaia, who met him as the Honda rider was leaving the pits and scolded him, with unjustified anger, because Marc then stuck to his its discharge. The Catalan spoke to the defending champion after the session to clear things up.
“On TV, when Q2 is over, they talk hotly and they had already told me that Pecco had complained. People talk and understand each other, so I told him that this time he wasn’t right. There are times when he’s right , because I’m behind him, I’m a pain in the ass and he’s right. But not this time. I wasn’t looking for him, it was pure chance and he gave me a chance to follow him. I just told him and he replied that I saw it coming. It was about a hundred yards away, I didn’t bother him at all on the track, but I didn’t want to waste too much time explaining. Eventually he gave in and said yes, if he saw it on TV it would have been clear to him. On the other hand, if you’re the fastest and you have the best bike, in the end you win, I didn’t have the opportunity to fight against him”, explained Marc.
Attacks on the Marquez
One gets the feeling that this year it is also very easy to pick on his brother Alex. It seems that she is becoming fashionable to pick on the Marquez family.
“My mother always told me one thing: the greatest attack is indifference. Ignoring, ignoring, doing one’s own interests. Whether they want to raise their hands, whether they are warming each other up, because there are friends, there are small groups in the paddock, like everywhere else, it’s fine. If they get angry with me, I can understand it, but if they get angry with my brother, I can’t understand it. Alex does the laps by himself, rides a Ducati, works without getting in the way, goes fast. Many riders are looking for a wheel, yesterday Bezzecchi followed Bagnaia and nothing happened. Today I did it behind Pecco, but other riders did it too. But this is modern MotoGP, in the end you have to work in the garage and not look at this I’m waiting, basically because I’m not ready to fight on track with all of them,” he said.
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team, Jack Miller, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Alex Marquez, among other things, ended up on the ground after a collision with Brad Binder, the very rider who was touched by the Gresini rider at Le Mans and for that maneuver he will be penalized three positions on the starting grid this Sunday, while the KTM rider suffered a Long Lap Penalty in the Sprint. Jack Miller, who instead hit Marc, causing him to lose several positions, was not penalized at all.
“Binder’s action is punishable because another rider crashes (Alex Marquez) and you know perfectly well that if you don’t look at turn 1, you’ll touch him. You can avoid it as a rider. The one with Miller was different: it was raining a little, he braked and the bike went sideways. When it rains with these aerodynamics you don’t brake, luckily I saw it out of the corner of my eye and got up again. But for me it’s not punishable. I don’t think he didn’t want to, it was within the limit”.
After discarding the Honda chassis at Le Mans and choosing the new Kalex chassis, Marquez returned to work with both on Saturday.
“Today I worked again with the chassis, but the red flag in the morning didn’t allow me to test the old one well and I went back to the new one (Kalex), I’ll continue with this tomorrow. But in the future I’ll try the chassis from the beginning of the season because I think it has positive aspects and we have to value it well.”
Finally, Marc compared the short race, in which he suffered, with the long one, in which he doesn’t expect to improve because the distance is double. “If I suffered in the short race, I will suffer even more in the long one,” he said.
“On the straight the engine doesn’t push enough and in the long race, with more laps, I’ll suffer more. The more laps there are, the more you suffer. Above all because I’m making a great physical effort, and if the Sprint was long, the Sunday will be even longer. I’m not riding in a comfortable way, it’s not balanced by having more laps. At the start of the race it seemed like I could follow them, but as the tire starts to sag, what I gain from braking and cornering all the time ‘start, I lose it later,” said the number 93.
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Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
