Pedro Acosta arrived in MotoGP and immediately showed competitiveness, stepping onto the podium in only his second race. He does not show major difficulties or delays in adapting to the premier class, while at Gresini Marc Márquez still has many instincts and automatic behaviors that are not ideal for Ducati.
When asked whether these different adaptation times are due to having spent many years with Honda or to his age, #93 replied:
– As you know, when you are younger, you learn more quickly. But especially, when you arrive in a new category, everything is new; you have no habits. And when you only change, for example in Qatar I was controlling everything, but if you look, all the mistakes happened when pushing for the best lap time.
And what is the reason for these errors happening at this moment? Márquez explained: ‘Because in the attack on the stopwatch you only go by instinct. When I go by instinct, there are still some automatic things that I forget. When I’m riding in the races I understand everything. But these things will come, because I always feel better and better’.
In fact, it has been in qualifying that Márquez has obtained his worst results: in Qatar he was sixth on the grid, while in Portugal he only achieved the eighth position at the start. In the Sprint races he scored two top five finishes (fifth in Losail, second in Portimão), while in the main race in Qatar he was fourth. In Portugal he was only 16th after consistently fighting for the top five, following an incident with Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) near the end.
