Márquez: "For the first time I wasn't afraid in the fall"

September 17, 2022

The Honda rider had already warned that the high expectations that were surrounding his reappearance this weekend at the Aragón Grand Prix did not have a solid foundation, and the Spanish rider was cut off in Q1, unable to fight for pole position and He will start 13th, from the fifth row of the grid, which in MotoGP today is practically impossible to recover.

After reappearing in the Misano tests, where he did 100 laps, and on Friday in the first two free practice sessions in Aragón, Marc Márquez suffered his first fall after the fourth operation on his arm.

“The falls, I said it yesterday and if I know it I won’t say it (laughs), they are part of the work, I had been taking risks for days with the tests with the CBR, the training sessions in Misano, yesterday and the day comes when you lose it. In the afternoon I managed to control this point a little more. Once again it has been a good day for us, especially because in the afternoon I felt good, fast and fluid on the bike, which is the most important thing. On the other hand, in the morning I don’t feel well, I don’t feel fluid, but luckily the race is in the afternoon, so I hope it goes well. If you go more relaxed you get less tired”, explained the Honda rider.

Márquez does not want to set specific objectives at the position level at the end of the race.

“Result I am not going to say any, today you have seen the reality, yesterday you told me that the rivals saw me on the podium, the expectations can be created very high, whatever you want, but I know my reality, where I am and the level of strength that I have, this is the World Championship and to fight with the best you have to have some sensations and a starting point that, now, is fair. The objective is to accumulate kilometers and lap times. Of course I will push, for sure, and If I can finish 10th better than 11th, sure, I’ll try, but knowing what our limits are.”

In the previous one, the Aragón race offers two spectacles, the fight for the title and what the Honda rider can do.

“At the pace level there are two races, the one with the three in front, Enea Bastianini, Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo, who I think are going to escape from the beginning, and then there is a small group of riders who go faster with tires new and the others with the used one, and that is where we are going to try to be if we make a good start, pick up an acceptable pace and be with people in the race, to make it more entertaining. I haven’t done a race in more than three months whole (Mugello) and that will be noticeable, at the start, in the first laps and at the end. When I came back in Portimao I tried and made mistakes, I will do my best, but up to a point”.

The most important thing, without a doubt, is that, after two Grand Prix days, Marc has not complained about the arm operated for the fourth time.

“The arm, logically, gets tired, some discomfort arises, but the important thing is that these discomforts are controllable, when I rest they go down and I gain muscle,” he said.

“What I liked the most today is that my head, when I fell, was not afraid to put my arm on the ground, which used to always shrink and never put my arm out. Today, unconsciously, I put it out, which is one of the important things, that these gestures come naturally to me”.

The fall was in the right profile, the one with the arm operated on four times.

“You never want to fall, but the fact that the first fall was slipping was a relief. I fell and that’s it, it’s been three months since I dragged myself along the asphalt at 150 km/h, I went to pick up the second bike, my arm hasn’t suffered at all and in order to gain confidence it’s important, now I can put both arms, not just the left one, something that hasn’t happened until now”.

Regarding the new weekend format for 2023 in MotoGP, Márquez insisted that “I like it, I already said it in Austria when it was announced”, but he did not want to think that far.

“At the moment we have to work inside the box to create a winning project, both for the bike and for the rider, if we have a bike and a rider it is a concept that I like, I have always liked more overtaking and fast racing”.

Despite his limitations, Márquez has been in the media center of the Aragón weekend, so he has had to abstract himself from the expectations created.

“On a psychological level, this weekend is faced by avoiding the world. It’s obvious that I’m proud and I understand the media boom, but you have to know how to evade yourself and be realistic, concentrate on what’s yours. It is clear that the illusion is always there, illusion is lived, I would like to go out, put myself first, escape and win, but it is not what touches and reality is different. We have to face the race knowing where we are. But it is also true that I wanted to reappear in Aragón, that I have tightened the nuts to return here, yes it is true, and that I arrived very fair, it is also true, but they are things that I must know how to understand.