Marc Márquez secured his first podium with Gresini Racing and Ducati by finishing second in the Sprint race at the Portuguese GP. He trailed winner Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) by 1.039s, hours after making an error in qualifying that resulted in a crash, affecting his result.
The six-time premier class champion expressed his satisfaction with the Sprint race but also acknowledged a mistake that hindered his qualifying performance: ‘Yeah, of course I’m super happy with the race, because the second place is another step in our process. You know that I always try to analyze everything and if we check a bit all Saturday I did a big mistake on qualifying that cost me starting from the third row. It was easy to be on the first row or the second row, but starting on that third row penalizes a lot. But today we were able to be fast, we have the speed and this is the most important from the weekend – that we have more speed than in Qatar, and this is helping me to overtake and be more constant’.
The mistake Márquez made was in activating the rear height device, but he admitted he doesn’t have a clear explanation for what happened: ‘Basically normally you need to engage when you roll the gas and it was a big mistake because I engaged when I was on gas. That was the mistake. But this will happen with all the bikes. […]. It was a mistake, I cannot explain. My mechanics asked me why I pushed and I said: «I pushed». I didn’t expect I pushed, but I pushed too early. On the image it’s easy to see the drop. When I realized that drop, it was too late. It was a big mistake just to learn for the future’.
When asked if the starting position made a difference in the final result, #93 replied: ‘You don’t know because the first lap was super good and in one part of the race I was behind Pecco [Bagnaia]. But I did a mistake on turn 5. In the end, Viñales did a super fast race, we were all the time on 1m38s, this is amazing. Tomorrow, starting from the first row would be much better, but we are starting from the third row, so we need to be fully focused on that start, on that first lap, and try to understand where we can arrive’.