Marc Marquez says he has had to settle for a “slow” pace at Jerez rather than “crashing many times” with his new Honda MotoGP bike that he’s yet to really get to grips with.
The Spaniard qualified fifth for tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix, but was still nearly a second off Francesco Bagnaia’s record-smashing pole lap for Ducati.
Having crashed twice within the span of a minute on Friday, Marquez managed to avoid joining the ranks of those within the Honda camp who took to the ground on Saturday – those being his brother Alex Marquez, test rider Stefan Bradl and his team-mate Pol Espargaro (pictured below).
“I don’t know [about] the other Hondas, but in my case still I don’t understand where is the limit,” the elder Marquez said.
“For that reason I just try to be very precise all the time, but I need to ride like this because if not I will crash many times.
“I need to be always precise, not exaggerate [my movements], don’t do a lot of mistakes, and this is the only way at the moment that I’m able to ride in a constant pace but slow pace.”
Marquez had tried to adapt the RC213V bike “in a radical way” on Friday to make it more in line with his usual riding style – but this didn’t bear fruit.
“Today we come back to the way the bike wants to be ridden, and it’s what I did today, more or less the same base for all Hondas, but it’s true that in my personal case I’m still struggling a lot with the front, the turning is slow.
“It’s there where we need to understand because as soon as I try to push a bit more then it’s easy to crash.”
Having come under fire from Aleix Espargaro for following the Aprilia on track on Friday, Marquez joked that he followed “everybody” during Saturday’s running – having used Jack Miller as a reference point in FP3 to book an automatic Q2 spot, before following first Bagnaia and then Fabio Quartararo on his two runs in Q2 itself.
“I knew that alone I was able to do 1m37.3s-1m37.4s more or less, but behind somebody I was able to be two tenths faster,” said Marquez, who ended up on a 1m37.145s and would’ve been ninth rather than fifth had he been two tenths slower.
“Because in this racetrack behind somebody in some points you lose, even on the brakes, behind somebody you lose – but on the fast corners, where I’m struggling more with the bike, is where I gained more.”
But despite the advantageous starting position, the six-time MotoGP champion doesn’t see a massive points haul on the horizon for Sunday.
“We are not ready to fight for the podium. A good result will be to try to be in the top five, but even like this will be very, very, very difficult.
“But from fifth to 10th is our position at the moment, and it’s where we will try to fight.”
