Márquez: “The Ducati takes the stickers off the Yamaha on the straight”

Quarter hour talk Marc Márquez in the Buriram paddock with the journalists who traveled to the Thai GP and another little while, now with the recorder off, one of those priceless ones that serve to better understand the person behind the rider. The Repsol Honda man looks happy. He knows that his eighth on the grid could have been a third or fourth had the Honda not given him the whiplash it gave him in the last corner, but now his war is to continue strengthening that right arm. And he is in it.

-How was your Q2?

-Q2, until the last corner, has gone really well. I have made the perfect strategy for when you play with only one tire. Because in the first start I did 30.8 with the used tire from Q1. Then I put the new one on and when I got out I met some Ducati riders, and they have the bike, they don’t need a slipstream. We started to play and in the end I found a good lap, it was good, very fast, but in the last corner I made a mistake like in FP3, more or less the same. We know what has happened, we are going to solve it for tomorrow but we have not been able to do it for Q2.

-A gesture from yesterday: he fell and lifted the bike alone. Was the reaction instantaneous, unconscious, and would this have been possible before?

-In fact this conversation came out when I returned to my office. He told me, I don’t know if it was José or my father: “You’ve lifted the motorcycle”. And he didn’t even remember me. He thought that they had helped me lift it, so it was an unconscious act at the time, but very good, because it means that the force is increasing, it is going up, and this is the most important thing for me. I notice this while riding but I also notice it when I’m getting dressed, when I pull up my overalls, in those gestures I see that I dress more normally, like before, and this is also important.

-You said you are happy with the result, but with a mistake at the end…

-I’m happy because we know what happened in FP3 and Q2. In Q1 it didn’t happen to me because that change was made. If you have noticed before Q2 we had to change tires quickly to the other bike, because we had problems with the bike that I liked, with the bike that did not have that problem. We have located it, but for security we had put one bike and one and just in Q2, on that lap, I had the same problem as in FP3. So I’m happy with that, because it’s a lap where I could have placed fourth, third, fifth, and this was unthinkable two races ago.

-The whiplash that the motorcycle has given entering the finish line without giving gas leaves the motorcycle in a very bad place, right?

-No, well, the bike is the same as in Qatar, it hasn’t changed much. The swingarm has changed, to be exact, everything else is the same. For my taste, and I think they have shown it in the past, Pol and Alex are not riders to be 19th and 20th, they come out back. The bike is what it is, they are improving, the goal is to collect information to improve it, but I already said it yesterday: I am starting to play with the bike, this makes me already have an extra, a plus. And as Quartararo is doing with the Yamaha, who is riding more and above his limits to be with the Ducati, in my good moments I was at that point with the Honda. And that’s what a winning driver has to do. I’m not at that point yet, but my goal is to continue evolving to make the most of what I have at any time. But yes, it is still a critical bike, difficult to understand. We are doing these races to improve it for next year.

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-Are you for the podium tomorrow?

-Man, if you start in front, fourth or third, and on a weekend that is completely dry, it means that the speed is there. What happens is that in FP4 the rhythms… if you ride a Ducati you have a tenth or two for free. The rhythms are fast, I needed a tenth, two per lap, to be inside the top five. I’m not in the top five, I’m between the top five and the top ten, but it’s enough for my goal, which is to accumulate kilometers. The race in Japan went very well for me and tomorrow, as I said, if it’s dry it will be very good for my physique. If it’s in the water everything opens up, but if it’s in the dry we’ll try to fight it, make a good start and have a solid race, without doing any crazy things.

-The process that Honda is going through, does it indicate that in the next races new things will be arriving, are they already arriving or are they waiting for Valencia to bring them?

-I know that they are working and I know that something is going to arrive, a concept, which does not mean that we go into detail to improve on one point, but rather something more than a concept to understand, because if we test it in Australia they still have time to make a evolution for Valencia, and there it is that when new things arrive it is time to mortgage the weekend, not to look for a result but to try things. This weekend, for example, I am not touching almost anything on the bike and in the end you are also more constant, you are evolving, but they are working and new things will surely come.

-If you were Quartararo and you saw yourself on the grid with three Ducati ahead and three behind, playing for the World Cup, what would you feel and what strategy would you propose?

-(Laughter). It has a good ballot, especially because where to overtake? Because you know that you will overtake and on the straight they will be parallel, as happened to me in FP4, all of a sudden I was on the straight all motivated and Marini in parallel…

-Removing your stickers?

-He hasn’t taken them off me, but he takes them off the Yamaha on the straight. What happens is that Fabio has a very good third partial, fourth partial, in curves to link the Yamaha is the Yamaha. And he will have to mount it in the best way. But he has an important ballot. I am interested in seeing how Ducati plays his cards tomorrow, whether you like it or not, the end of the World Cup is near.

-You played here the last victory with Fabio. Has the Fabio of now grown a lot?

-Fabio was a rookie, it was his rookie moment. He did the races pulling, which he has always done, but he pulled, pulled and didn’t think about how to manage the last laps. And now I think he can handle it. But it is that he is not there to manage, he is to shoot, shoot and finish as far ahead. The handicap he has is that overtaking a Ducati costs a lot. But Fabio is now a world champion, here in 2019 he risked it but he was a rookie. That he did, that he had been going all season and was going very fast, but now he is a world champion. He says it all.

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