Marc Marquez was second fastest on the opening day of practice for the 2022 season-opening Qatar Grand Prix, but then downplayed his chances of resuming winning ways this weekend.
Despite that practice pace and some encouraging signs on his fitness, he doesn’t yet believe that he’s got the pace needed to fight for victory.
The eight-time world champion continues to carry the legacy of a number of career-threatening crashes over the past months and years, with his right shoulder and arm still not back to full strength following the crash he suffered at Jerez during the opening round of the 2020 season and the subsequent aggravation of his injury caused by trying to ride on the broken bone a week later.
He faced a fresh setback last November just as he started to consistently win races again, when an innocuous crash during training left him suffering from a return of the double vision problem that cost him the 2011 Moto2 title.
Unable to train his arm during most of the winter, it means he starts the season not quite in the condition he hoped for – and despite today’s impressive result, only 0.035s off fastest man Alex Rins, he stressed that it was too early to get excited just yet.
“Maybe second position is not my position on the race pace,” he admitted, “but overall the day was better than I expected.
“The target was to try to be in the top 10 to go straight to Q2 because I don’t think tomorrow morning we’ll improve the lap times [in FP3].
“I’m happy about how I’m riding but I’m still riding in a strange way. The lap time is coming, and that’s important.
“The physical condition has improved a lot, and the thing is that normally from the first test to the first race you don’t improve a lot but when you are all winter doing nothing and sitting on the sofa, you feel a lot in one month.
“From the Malaysian test to here I felt a lot and I’m riding much better, but now I need to see how that power is during three days.
“I don’t have pain in the shoulder and it’s the first time I have felt this, so I’m very happy. Today, riding the bike, there was no physical condition that was stopping me.”
Adding to that complication, of course, is the fact that his physical condition isn’t the only challenge that Marquez is facing this winter.
Now riding a radically different Repsol Honda machine after his team made the decision to dramatically alter the balance of the bike, he admits that he’s also still trying to change his riding style to suit the bike.
That’s further complicated by missing out on valuable post-season testing at Jerez last November thanks to his eyesight problem, and it’s now potentially a bigger impediment than his still-improving physical form.
“In the riding style concept, I’m not pushing a lot on the entry,” he explained.
“Before, I was very fast on the entry, but now I’m not very fast – and also I don’t feel the front in that part.
“I feel strange, I don’t feel the limit, I don’t feel the front, still I don’t understand where it is.
“Honestly, I feel slower, and this is good – but if you try to be faster then you are slower!
“It’s strange, because I still haven’t found how to use all the potential of the bike.
“Honda did an amazing job, and I thank them – I think the only brand who can change one year to the next like this is Honda.
“It’s such a big difference that it is like I changed manufacturer, but in a good way. It’s something that I appreciate a lot and they worked very hard.
“Still we need to understand the way, because today I still haven’t touched the bike – we’re still riding the bike of Mandalika, because still we don’t understand.
“Tomorrow we’ll start to play with this a little, but saying that, it seems like at this racetrack in Qatar, we are not the fastest ones.
“It seems that the Yamaha and Suzuki bikes, with the engine in a different way, are more consistent and faster than us.”
