Marc Márquez fought for victory in a premier class race for the first time since joining Gresini by facing Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) in the Spanish GP – despite riding the previous year’s version of the Italian bike.
The 2022 and 2023 champion ended up winning, but it was evident that Márquez still has his skills and abilities intact. However, Óscar Haro believes that at a certain point in the Jerez race, the Spaniard showed tension: ‘He was tense and took a long time to overtake [Marco] Bezzecchi, and he wore out the front tire a lot, increased the pressure and wore out the rear tire a lot‘.
On Nico Abad’s YouTube channel, the former LCR Honda leader then made a comparison: ‘If you look at the trajectory that Pecco was taking, it was a much more open trajectory, on the contrary Marc was taking a more Honda-like trajectory, with peaks, going more inside, and with that what he does is take longer to lift the bike and makes more sliding and wears out the tire more‘.
In Haro’s opinion, the outcome could have been different if Márquez had overtaken Bezzecchi more quickly: ‘Then, when he overtook [Bezzecchi], it was already too late. If he had arrived earlier and hadn’t worn out the tire so much, it would have been different‘.
