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 last year’s version of the Italian bike.
He ended up being the champion of 2022 and 2023, but it was proven 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‘.
In 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 trajectory more like Honda, sharper, going more inside, and what that does is that it takes longer to lift the bike and causes 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‘.
