Qualified ninth and a little woozy this weekend, Marc Márquez was, on paper, not the favorite to get on the podium. However, the Spanish champion once again proved what he is capable of by securing another third place at the finish of the Japanese GP, a result already obtained yesterday in the sprint race.
Son verdict ? “A boring but tactical race!”, he sums up on the official MotoGP website. It’s a very personal definition of what boredom can be, especially since the first laps saw him gain six places, but the fact is that the rest of the race left the competitor that he is on his hunger.
“It was boring because there were no overtakes, and I love overtaking,” explains Marquez. “I made a good comeback, with good first laps,” he concedes. However, when he got rid of everyone he had to overtake, on the fifth lap, the Gresini driver had already accumulated 1.3 seconds behind the leading duo, Pecco Bagnaia in the lead ahead of Jorge Martín.
“Obviously, when you start from the front, everything is different but I started ninth. I did the first lap well, but not perfectly either because at turn 10, when Jorge overtook me, I missed a little acceleration, then Miller passed me at turn 11 and I lost time.
At a pace lower than that of the two leaders, Márquez had already accumulated four and a half seconds behind when he was called to order by his Ducati. “I recovered a lot of positions but when I found myself in third place, they were already a little too far away. I tried to keep moving forward, again and again, and at one point I said to myself that I was going to attack, but attacking means taking more risks on the braking points and I widened at turn 1, I lost a second and a half in one lap.”
“It is true that Pecco applied a perfect strategy, which was to start first and push, to manage his tires but trying to build a lead because he knew that Martín and I were starting behind. Only, on this kind of stop-and-go circuit, if you are behind someone, you lose a lot of braking performance and then you don’t gain exit because of the aero, so that makes life a lot more complicated and you can’t Overtake the one in front only if you are two or three tenths faster. Otherwise, if you are only one tenth faster, it is impossible.
The fear of seeing Bastianini return
After his big heat in the 14th lap, Marc Márquez forgot all ambition of catching up with the first two and focused on another serious opponent, the one who had put up impressive resistance to him yesterday in the sprint race.
“From there, the second race started: trying to control Bastianini. I was a little scared for the last laps because he was super fast. Even when riding in low 1’45s, he was catching up with me!”, wonders the Spaniard, nevertheless happy to have managed to control the situation.
Marc Márquez feared the return of Enea Bastianini at the end of the race.
Photo de: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“I think we were the fastest on the last lap. I was attacking and trying to be super careful with everything. I was pushing hard on the front tire. The rear was finished and so I started to take risks with the front I told myself that I would try, but even so, I saw that he was still closing the gap. So I was a little afraid but even if the situation! wasn’t under control, I felt great.”
Ultimately, Bastianini did not have the opportunity to attack Márquez and it was an eighth podium that fell into the Spaniard’s hands during this 16th Grand Prix of the season. In the championship, he only took one point from his rival over the entire weekend, while providing an overall positive assessment.
“We started the weekend being far from [Bagnaia et Martín] but we finished quite close. It’s not enough, but we’re on the right track.” he holds back. “It’s quite positive. There are things to understand, especially because this weekend I seemed super fast with the soft tire and in the time attack, but a little more difficult with the tire medium rear, while it was completely the opposite in the other races. We have to understand why.”
