With the 13th time in Friday afternoon’s practice, Marc Márquez was relegated to the first qualifying session of the French MotoGP Grand Prix – something that had never happened to him since he joined Gresini. And, in part, he feels guilty about it, even though he had a lot of difficulties with the bike.
The Spaniard explained that he is not able to ride as well as on other occasions and there is a need to work on the weaker aspects: ‘For example, in the Jerez test I was riding very easily and I was feeling quite good. Here, for some reason, I am not finding the correct speed on the track. I am just pushing too hard and when you don’t see the lap time you attack in the points where you feel strong and in those points you are already fast. So, now is the time to work on the weak points and see what we can do‘.
At the end of the practice, Márquez did not hide his frustration still on the track, clarifying later: ‘I wasn’t angry, but I was feeling that frustration on the last tire because… of course I did a lap just to see and then on the next lap there was a yellow flag and on the last one I made a mistake, so I was angry with my mistake because I knew it was the last chance. And in those two laps that were good for me and for the tire, I couldn’t take advantage‘.
Can the data from other Ducati riders help #93 improve? The eight-time world champion believes so: ‘Of course this can help a lot, and this is something that… we have many Ducatis faster than us, so we need to understand where they are, where we are, and try to find the right balance for me, for my riding style. Maybe we need to go in the direction of some of them‘.
