Marquez recovers from ‘worst Friday’ to keep pace at front

Marc Marquez says drastic set-up alterations to his Repsol Honda and changing his own riding style rescued a difficult start to his British MotoGP race weekend to keep in touch with the front-runners despite assessing the resurfaced Silverstone as ‘a disaster’.

The reigning MotoGP world champion struggled in the opening practice session in 10th – 1.6 seconds off pace-setter Maverick Vinales – in a session where he almost pulled off a trademark save after losing the front of his bike into Brooklands.

Marquez recovers from ‘worst Friday’ to keep pace at front

Marc Marquez says drastic set-up alterations to his Repsol Honda and changing his own riding style rescued a difficult start to his British MotoGP race weekend to keep in touch with the front-runners despite assessing the resurfaced Silverstone as ‘a disaster’.

The reigning MotoGP world champion struggled in the opening practice session in 10th – 1.6 seconds off pace-setter Maverick Vinales – in a session where he almost pulled off a trademark save after losing the front of his bike into Brooklands.

Marquez explains extensive set-up changes after ‘everything was out’ saw him recover to take fourth place at the end of FP2, 0.144s off timesheet-topper Andrea Dovizioso, but concedes the resurfaced Silverstone track remains a concern.

“I am very happy because we started with the worst Friday for us and the worst way,” Marquez said. “We started FP1 and everything was out, electronics, set-up of the bike, my riding style, everything was out and I was really far from the top.

“But then the team did an incredible job from FP1 to FP2 and also I tried to analyse what was going on and we did a big step. We already have more or less the same pace as the top guys which is important.

“It was so difficult to understand in FP1 because like I said everybody expected the new asphalt to give us a good track and it was a disaster. It was worse than last year, better grip but many bumps.

“In FP1 I ride too aggressive but also the bike was shaking a lot but then the front tyre was also not a good tyre for me so everything was going the wrong way, even the electronics was out, but then for FP2 the team worked a lot to give me another kind of set-up, another kind of electronics and I changed my riding style.

“All this means we improved the pace by one second and we were very close to Maverick and Dovi that are, at the moment, the fastest ones but we are there very close and this is the most important thing because in a difficult situation you need to react.”

Marquez blamed the grass run-off area for denying him the chance to produce another incredible save after tucking the front of his Honda midway through FP1 as he shrugged off the incident.

“I arrived there with big bumps there and I already had chatter so then I lost the front,” he said. “But I started to try to save it.

“When I saw that natural grass was there, I didn’t expect natural grass, because we always try to remove it but it was there and I lost it when I went into it.”

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