Marc Márquez concluded his on-track preparation yesterday in Losail for his first MotoGP season with Gresini and riding a Ducati. The Spaniard set the fourth fastest time on the final day of testing, being 0.383s slower than the leader, Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati).
The six-time world champion of the premier category began by commenting to the press: ‘It’s no secret: throughout the preseason I was quite calm because I knew: step by step, without panic, simply… at times I was very far away, but trying to understand every step I take because it’s a new bike and it was important‘.
According to Márquez, on this last day of preseason he took more risks, although he admits that there are still stronger riders at this point: ‘It was the day to take another step, to increase the risk, and that’s what we did. Especially in attacking the clock, I was closer, in the long run I was attacking well – it’s true that there are no lap times because there was a problem with my transponder. I also had the first crash, but it’s normal because I increased the risk on the bike. Besides, I’m happy. There are still three/four/five riders faster than us – especially [Francesco] Bagnaia, [Jorge] Martín, [Enea] Bastianini are faster than us. But let’s see; I was closer than in Malaysia, so step by step we need to understand how to learn from them‘.
Only in the Qatar GP will #93 be in direct competition with other bikes aboard his Ducati for the first time, and he admitted that at this stage there is still a lot to learn and it will be normal to make mistakes: ‘This is another aspect, it will be another lesson: understanding how to ride behind others, understanding how to overtake. Sometimes I still forget to deactivate the height adjustment device because it works differently and in the long series when I was thinking of changing the maps I forgot to deactivate the device. I will still make some mistakes in the races because it is part of the process. But I need to stay calm and simply follow what I did in the preseason. There will be races where I will suffer a lot. But if it’s time to suffer, it’s time to suffer. What I want to do is try to enjoy. There will be days that will be harder, but we’ll see. There are still many things to learn‘.
