Marco achieved his second consecutive podium in MotoGP this Sunday, with a second place in the French GP. The Gresini man is making progress and in this race he started from 13th to reach second with an impressive overtaking of Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) on the last lap. He finished 0.446s behind the winner, Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati).
The eight-time world champion spoke in a press conference about his performance in the race: ‘Today we cooked that podium more slowly. It’s true that yesterday was an unreal start and that gave me second place in the Sprint race. But for me, the most important thing yesterday was that I had the pace to recover. So, I was slowly trying to overtake the other riders, and when I was in third, I lost some time with [Fabio] DiGia. But from there I said: “Well, third place is good.” But I saw that I was catching up, the pace was there, and I hoped that Pecco would attack Martín in the last laps, but it didn’t happen, and then I decided to attack him.’
On the other hand, Márquez analyzed: ‘Of course, today the start was good, but in turns 1, 2 and 3 I didn’t find the right position because I went a bit wide in those fast corners. From that point, I said: “Now it’s time to make that recovery.”
In the understanding of Spanish, there were performance differences between the Ducati Desmosedici GP24 and GP23: ‘When I caught up to them – even when I was behind [Enea] Bastianini, I saw that they had very good acceleration coming out of turn eight – that’s where I was losing a bit more. On the main straight it was more similar, but in turns 7 and 8 I was losing a bit more. But I was strong in other areas, so maybe this 2024 [bike] was better in those areas, and in left turns or for example when I passed Pecco at that point I felt very strong, so maybe… I don’t know, I haven’t tried the bike, so maybe my bike is better there’.
