Marco Bezzecchi
Marc Marquez put in a very impressive performance to claim P5 upon his return from injury at the Mugello Sprint race, but later admitted that he can ‘never’ be satisfied with such a result.
The calibre of performance that we would see from Marc Marquez heading into the Italian Grand Prix was largely an unknown. Of course, someone of the reigning world champion’s skillset was always going to perform, but a P5 finish was rather impressive.
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However, it wasn’t up to scratch in the eyes of Marquez himself, who has detailed just how dissatisfied he is with having to be happy with the fact that he recorded a result off the podium.
The factory Ducati star returned to action this weekend following a near-three week stint on the sidelines. He went under the knife for two separate procedures during his time away from the MotoGP paddock, but hasn’t lost an ounce of his competitiveness.
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Marc Marquez admits he was forced to ‘settle’ for P5 during Italian GP Sprint
During his post-Sprint race debrief with DAZN, the reigning world champion explained how he must now settle for results akin to his P5 finish on Saturday in Mugello.
“I’m happy, and I’m in a process where you have to celebrate when you make it into Q2, you have to celebrate a second-row start, and you have to celebrate a top-five finish. We’ll try to keep working.”
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“Obviously, I’m never satisfied with these results, but for now I must settle and stay calm. Tomorrow we’ll try, just like today, to start with enthusiasm, see where we stand, but there are clearly four riders who have finished ahead of us.
“And then there’s Fermin [Aldeguer] and Pecco [Bagnaia], who I think, on paper, are faster than us, but we’ll try to manage it as best we can.”
After taking the lead into turn one, Marquez quickly fell down the order as his on-track rivals muscled their way past the Spaniard. It was clear that he wasn’t quite 100% upon his return to two wheels, and so Marquez was unable to provide an answer back.
“That’s just how it is – I have to ride like this now, don’t I? If I get too worked up, I’ll be the one to lose out. So it’s true that on the first lap I got overtaken all over the place, but that’s just how it is: when you don’t attack, the best defence is a good attack.
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“So, if you don’t attack, they’ll attack you on the first lap – that’s normal – but I’ve decided to start off calmly and see if we can get a good start tomorrow.
“Get through those first few laps and settle into a comfortable pace so I can get through the whole race in a decent way.”
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