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Marc Marquez finally ended Sunday's bitter streak of defeats at the Austrian GP. No points in a long race even since last season, on the ups and downs of the Red Bull Ring he picked up the three points for twelfth position, equivalent to the first top-15 finish of his 2023 season in a Grand Prix. The Austrian round gave us a glimpse of some small glimmer of light, even though the Tokyo manufacturer's period of crisis in MotoGP is far from over.
"There's no secret. Like at Silverstone, I tackled the weekend trying to take as few risks as possible with the bike. This way it's easy to finish in the points. It wasn't easy, but we managed to bring home the race. For the whole weekend we managed the margin of risk to avoid crashes. Except for FP1 on Friday, although I only crashed on the gravel after running wide without pushing to the limit. From then on, we went in crescendo”, declared the number 93 who this morning finished last in the warmup.
There was no lack of desire to risk different strategies from the competition, such as the soft tyre at the rear, compared with the vast majority who adopted the medium one: "It was the best solution for the Honda, albeit I was aware that I would have to manage the first laps. All the engineers who were able to analyse it were against it, but I made them understand that the RC213V couldn't go with the medium tyre. We would have been too slow and would have accomplished nothing. Just analyse the unexciting pace of my brand mates who chose it. It was my gamble, for a moment Santi Hernandez (his track engineer, ed.) had to convince me since the whole grid had opted for the medium".
The main goal was to provide useful data to the HRC engineers to try and take a step forward in view of the season finale: “Although a rider like me doesn't like it, we had to change our approach. We used the ten minutes of the warmup as a further test, trying something very big on the bike that didn't have the desired effects. For this reason, we came out with something very different in the race, even compared to the Sprint Race on Saturday. During the race I felt quite comfortable and pushed when I could”.
“We've been facing a lot of checks lately and I must keep my concentration on every occasion. With this bike, you don’t need much to go wrong. Otherwise, you can't understand the real behaviour of your technical package - he continued - today, for example, I had new motivations: to safeguard the life of the soft to arrive in the best condition at the end of the race. On a mental level it is stressful, but I try to do my best and the path is right".
And he pointed out: “Of course, I'm not happy to finish 23 seconds behind the first guy. We cannot be happy and it's not my mentality. But in the end, we need to approach the races in a different way. When you are so far from the leaders it can happen that you enter negative spirals, it happens to me in many moments of the weekend. Luckily all the people around me help me to get out of it and move forward”.
The gap to the winner weighs a ton and suggests that catching up with the Ducatis will take a long time: "It will take a while to fully understand the dynamics of this second part of the season before I really see myself closer to the positions that count in the ranking. Now we are a long way off. What do I expect from Misano? I don't know, they have had a year to work. I had already admitted at the Valencia tests at the end of 2022 that with this bike we wouldn't have fought for the world championship and nevertheless we started 2023 with the same bike. Other work has been done during these eight months. We know that this is a wasted year in fact, we are confident of progressing in view of 2024".
In conclusion, the champion from Cervera expressed his opinion on Honda's signing of Johann Zarco, the future LCR rider starting next year: "I consider the entry of an experienced rider like Johann to be positive, above all because now he is riding the benchmark motorcycle of the lot (the Ducati, ed.). It will be important to understand his level of competitiveness with our bike”. On Bagnaia instead: “He has extraordinary confidence with the bike, the team and the project. The few changes that are made to the Ducati allow him to concentrate on riding. As a result, you feel invincible. When inertia works, everything becomes easier, and you can have fun. It’s definitely the high point of his career ”.
