A banged up Marc Marquez was left “angry” about his second crash of the Dutch TT weekend, an accident that consigned him to the worst qualifying result of his MotoGP career.
Marquez took a serious knock in second Friday practice when he was violently thrown off his Honda, and was visibly limping when off the bike on Saturday.
A second crash then added to his problems in the first qualifying segment, relegating him to 20th on the grid – six places lower than his previous worst starting position in the premier class.
Marquez used a new Honda chassis during the day, having planned to do back-to-back tests with the previous package but ultimately deciding that he was “not ready” for such work.
He said that initially in the morning he doubted whether it would be at all possible to ride on Saturday.
“The crash from yesterday, I had a lot of pain on the right foot [that I landed on],” Marquez said.
“With the right arm [injured in 2020], I’m not able to push a lot, but also with the right foot I was not able to push. And then it was very difficult.
“This was in the morning. Then in the afternoon, step by step, I felt better, and this made me happy.”
Marquez ran alone in the early stages of Q1 then attempted to ride behind Johann Zarco – who would eventually top the session, but ran wide at Turn 1 with Marquez in tow and left the Honda man to do a lap without a reference.
That lap looked on course to be an improvement before Marquez – running a used medium front – fell at De Bolt, in what he described as a “normal crash” compared to his massive Friday shunt.
“It’s qualifying practice, you push more, you push a little bit more on the brakes, you lose the front,” he said. “I understand the crash. Just I was angry at myself, because with the first tyre in the qualifying practice I felt strange, I was not riding well.
“And the soft [rear] tyre, 22 laps [on it], I was faster in FP4 [with a best time of 1m33.164s] than in my qualifying practice [with a best time of 1m33.477s].
“In the second [soft rear] tyre [in Q1] I felt really good, really good potential, and for that reason I was pushing – in that lap I was pushing alone, in front, and I lost the front.
“And I was disappointed because I knew that this would penalise a lot the race for tomorrow, because I will start on the back.”
Marquez, however, made certain to commend Honda for its efforts after the criticism he levied at the bike on Friday.
Having demanded an electronics fix after the crash, Marquez said he has already “received a new solution that was working much better and more safe”, and also praised the effort to bring a new chassis.
The six-time champion appeared a lot less disappointed than team-mate Pol Espargaro, who qualified nine places higher but felt a much better position should’ve been possible given superior practice results.
“The problem is that I used the soft front tyre,” said Espargaro, one of three riders to use the soft front in Q2 along with poleman Maverick Vinales and Suzuki’s Alex Rins.
“I f***ed up with this. It’s a rookie mistake, because in qualifying the track gets more grippy, and then the soft tyre normally becomes softer, and the hard tyres become softer too. The medium tyre was the tyre to choose, as Taka [Nakagami, fourth-placed LCR Honda rider] did.
“And I just f***ed up. Twice, because I didn’t change [mid-session].
“I’m really pissed off, because we had the rhythm to be fighting for something great tomorrow and now starting from 11th we are in the same trouble as always. I’m pissed off, I’m super pissed off.”
