Marc Márquez achieved his second consecutive podium in MotoGP this Sunday, finishing second in the French GP. The Gresini rider is making progress, and in this race, he started from 13th to reach second with an impressive overtaking move on 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 at the press conference about his approach to the race: ‘Today we cooked that podium in a slower way. It’s true that yesterday was an unreal start and that gave me the second place in the Sprint race. But for me yesterday the most important was that I had the pace to comeback. So I was slowly trying to overtake the other riders, and when I was on third place I lost some time with [Fabio] DiGia. But from that point I said: «Okay, third place is okay». But I saw that I was catching them, the pace was there, and I expected that Pecco attacked Martín in the last laps, but it was not like this, and then I decided to attack him’.
On the other hand, Márquez analyzed: ‘Of course today was a good start, but in turn 1, 2 and 3 I didn’t find the correct place because I went a bit wide on that fast corners. From that point, I said: «Now it’s time to make that comeback»’.
According to the Spanish rider, there were performance differences between the Ducati Desmosedici GP24 and GP23: ‘When I arrived to them – even when I was behind [Enea] Bastianini I saw that they had a really good acceleration on the exit of turn eight – it was where I was losing a bit more. In the main straight was more similar, but in turns 7 and 8 I was losing a bit more. But I was strong in another points, so maybe the 2024 [bike] was better on those points, and in the left corners or for example when I overtook Pecco on that point I felt super strong, so maybe… I don’t know, I didn’t try the bike, so maybe my bike is better there’.