Motegi.- After the trigger that was the first lap of the Aragon Grand Prix, the weekend of his reappearance after the fourth operation on his right arm, Marc Márquez was able to complete the 24 laps of the Japanese race and do so, furthermore, in a more than brilliant fourth position, attacking in the final part of the race and overtaking Miguel Oliveira to stay just outside the podium of the home grand prix for Honda.
The rain and the complicated conditions on Saturday were the best ally for the Spaniard to shorten the pole position, his first in 1071 days three years later, and a position from which he was able to face the race outside the dangers of the peloton at the start.
Márquez was overtaken in the first lap by several riders, among them the three two podiums, but he knew how to stabilize himself, solve a technical problem with his bike, “Honda protects me and I protect Honda, I’m not going to explain what happened “, he said, staying fifth every lap and, in the last one, getting an overtake to finish fourth.
“The feeling of the weekend is very good, although, in a normal weekend, with all the sessions in the dry, I would have finished a bit further back, seventh or eighth,” he explained.
“I’m very happy, especially because it was a solid race, and I didn’t feel any pain at all. That’s why I was able to attack Oliveira at the end of the race, something I couldn’t do for a long time, rather they attacked me” , he added.
The physical test after the fourth operation seems to be overcoming in a positive way, “I no longer think about the arm, we don’t talk about it in the team, only with Alberto Puig , who is the one who has followed the issue more closely”.
“The confidence increases, but we have to go easy because the weak points of the bike are still there,” he recalled.
In the information prior to the race it was indicated that Márquez was going to start with hard rear rubber, but at the last minute he changed it for the soft one.
“We put the soft rubber behind because I wanted to attack, but I had a little problem that caused several drivers to overtake me. The good thing is that I solved it by changing the map in the second corner of the first lap,” he said relieved.
In the morning, in the warm-up, the Honda rider suffered a crash without consequences.
“I crashed in the warm up and I think it was positive, because otherwise I could have crashed in the race.”
For Márquez, today’s MotoGP bikes have changed a lot and that makes his usual attacking style difficult.
“We are no longer in 2019, but in 2022. The bikes have changed and now it is very difficult to overtake. If you are behind someone it is very complicated.”
“I didn’t expect to finish so well physically,” the Catalan settled when asked how he felt after his first full race in four months.
