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Marc Marquez has insisted that he is not the favourite for this weekend’s German Grand Prix, despite both his incredible record at the Sachsenring and strong pace on the opening day of practice.
His comments come after MotoGP championship leader Fabio Quartararo told the media that he still believes that Marquez, who topped FP1 but then finished Friday 0.6 seconds off Miguel Oliveira’s fastest time of the day, is among the favourites for this weekend’s race.
Adamant that the 10-time winner, who is unbeaten since 2010 at the track in various classes of grand prix racing, will be strong, Quartararo is also sure of one thing – that he’ll do his absolute best to ensure that come Sunday there’s no fairytale Marquez win to celebrate his long road back from injury.
“He was super strong,” said the Yamaha rider when asked by The Race about Marquez’s Friday form, “but I feel the same [as before the weekend].
“In 2019, I remember he made my life so hard for me to get my first victory, so I will try to do the same.
“It looks like yes, he’s super fast, and his pace looks good. We know that in this track he’s super fast.
“I’m one of the only ones to really say it, but I think everyone thinks the same – he had a really tough time and I would be really happy for him if he gets a really good result, but, ‘happy for him’ but not happy for us. We need to try to manage to get a really good result here, and try to not let him win.
“I’m not here for that. I’m here to fight for the win, for the podium here, so this is out of my mind at the moment – but yeah, it would be something great.”
However, Marquez himself isn’t anywhere near as confident as Quartararao about his race pace.
Downplaying his comments from yesterday about how he expected to be fully fit this weekend, Marquez admitted that there had been a harder physical toll than he had expected.
“The weekend has started in another way,” he conceded, “with a different performance from the other ones, because I already said yesterday that I felt like I had less physical limitations here. But honestly speaking, I expected less; I expected to have zero problems but I’m still not riding very well.
“I didn’t put in a new tyre [at the end of FP2] because I felt like I didn’t have enough power to use one. I spoke with the team, because it was in the plan to use one, and I told them after that I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t have enough energy.
“I said yesterday that there would be zero limitations, and there are less than at other circuits but still I feel something.”
Not just visibly weaker on his right side as he continues with his rehabilitation process but also unable to ride the bike the way he wants to as a result, Marquez says that while things are slowly getting better, there’s still much room to improve.
“You can see that my right elbow is very high and that I can’t ride like I want,” the Repsol Honda rider explained. “At the moment I’m able to manage a good pace, but tomorrow one of the things will be to manage that riding style.
“I am not the favourite at the moment. I’m coming from a deep situation and of course it’s only Friday.
“One of the most important things is that we are working with the bike to understand many things, and the pace is good – but it’s not the best one on the race track at the moment.”
Exactly how long that process will take remains to be seen, as well, as he works on his physical rehabilitation from the broken arm suffered almost a year ago.
“What they’ve told me, the doctors,” added the Spaniard, “is that after three surgeries to a single bone, it’s possible to get a small rotation or something similar because it’s so hard to be precise. The body needs time, and when I ask them what ‘time’ means, if it’s one week or one month or one year, they say one year.
“The muscles need to compensate, some that were before maybe working less are now working more. They should compensate for this different position of my arm, but I need to work at it. I have the mobility, I can go in the correct way, but when I do I don’t feel safe; I don’t have the power.
“Step by step we’ve been working on the positioning and until now I’ve been able to do it, but here we’ve got more left corners and I’m not able to do it.”
