Marc Márquez was an attentive spectator with a view like few others during the epic battle that Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martín had on the track today at the Malaysian GP and he was not able, he clarified, to join the duel due to the pace of the race.
The rider, who crashed in Sepang when he was third, was happy with his performance: ‘It was a super good weekend and I’m happy because we were very good. It’s true that if you make a mistake on Sunday it seems like a disaster but it wasn’t like that. I always take the positives and it was a very good weekend’.
Márquez then talked about the fight he witnessed firsthand: ‘In the race I was a VIP spectator of that good battle, and I really enjoyed it, but at the same time I didn’t understand: they were fighting, the lap times were super fast. I was missing the slipstream and I saw that we were also gaining time on the other riders [further back], so they were riding very well’.
And while he was behind the championship-leading duo, he thought about whether or not to join the fight, or if there was any impediment given their speed, Márquez explained: ‘They were faster than me. Sometimes you’re behind someone, and someone watching on TV says: «Why don’t you overtake? Why don’t you join the battle?» but today even if I tried to be in that battle they were faster than me and it wasn’t possible in terms of riding pace’.
In the end he was happy with his result, this being the positive point after returning to the track after crashing: ‘Apart from that the good thing is that we returned to the race [after the crash] and finished in 12th place’.