Marc Marquez: “Basically the bike was a disaster”

Although technically not a grand prix, the result nonetheless seemed to symbolise the extent of Honda’s woes.

Marquez had not lost a race at the Sachsenring since 2009, winning ever since on a range of 125, Moto2 and MotoGP bikes.

Yet on Saturday he couldn’t even finish in the top ten, fading from fifth to eleventh after earlier suffering three qualifying crashes in the space of half an hour.

It was when sitting down after qualifying and digesting the morning chaos that Marquez decided to reign-in his risk level for the race.

When it also became apparent that a set-up change designed to increase rear grip had backfired, Marquez settled for bringing the bike to the finish.

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“I got up today and my energy level was positive. I said ‘Yesterday we struggled. But today I will do’,” Marquez explained.

“Then in wet conditions [in FP3] as normal we are fast, but as soon as the track dried we were struggling a lot. In the qualifying practice, I was pushing and crashing, coming back to the box and pushing again to be there.

“But then when I was sitting in my office between qualifying and the sprint race, all that risk for a seventh position [on the grid] was not enough for me.

“I still went out in the race optimistic, like you see on the first lap I attacked, but already in the first lap I had one warning in turn 11, then one warning on turn 1 and in that case, you close [the throttle] a bit and finish the race.”

Marquez had been fastest in the wet final practice, before a trio of qualifying accidents began with a fall at the last corner in Q1.

Sprinting back to the pits, the #93 grabbed his dry bike, fitted with the Kalex chassis, and snatched the final transfer place into Q2 behind Brad Binder.

But the same final corner then caught Marquez out at the start of Q2, this time a nasty highside that threw him over the ‘bars and sent him limping through the gravel. Even his own Repsol Honda team appeared to have given up hope of getting his sole remaining bike back to the garage in time to continue, yet Marquez managed to do just that.

With replacement wings snatched from absent team-mate Joan Mir’s machine, Marquez returned for the final minutes. He improved from 12th to 7th before yet another fall, this time at Turn 1, the scene of his scary impact with Johann Zarco on Friday, ended his qualifying.

“Yeah, it's too much. It's a lot,” he said of those accidents. “But at least I'm close to the top guys. But the way to be close to the top guys is the way that takes too much risk and then the consequence is crashing too much.”

Half of Honda’s four MotoGP riders are currently sidelined through injury and Marquez, who gave his bike the middle finger after it tried to fire him off through Turn 11 yesterday, explained:

“Then I analysed the situation… For example, I remember I was sitting on my sofa in Jerez and Mir crashed four times during all weekend fighting for 15th position.

“So it's not a matter of ‘I want to be there’. It's a matter of trying to push, but we can’t. So it's important to see the real situation.

“The problem is that when you are fighting for sixth, seventh or eighth position it’s easy to roll off. But when you're fighting for the podium, like I was in the Le Mans race and the Mugello race, it's more difficult for a rider to roll off because you see that [a good result] is there. But we are not ready to be there.”

“I try to do my best always and as you see in P1, the natural riding is there and I was in third position,” he continued.

“But the problem is that when you have that natural riding [style] for a circuit, you arrive very quickly to the limit, but then the others start to arrive and then pass that limit.

“So I’m struggling. Normally with the Honda that I remember we were very fast in the slow corners, in the turning. But now with this Honda, we are very fast on the fast corners, like for example Mugello, but we are losing on that turning, especially here.”

Marc Marquez: “Bike was basically a disaster everywhere”

But things are not as bad the Sprint race result appeared, due to a set-up change making his rear grip problem even worse.

Marquez, who used both a standard Honda chassis and the Kalex on Saturday, will return to his normal base setting for Sunday.

“This race, I cannot evaluate well, especially because we did a change for the race, just taking a risk, because yesterday I was struggling a lot with the rear grip and doing that change we lost more rear grip and less turning. So the bike basically in the race was a disaster everywhere,” he said.

“Tomorrow will be better. We will come back with the bike I know and let's see if tomorrow with my base, I can at least suffer less.”

LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami, the only other RC213V rider present this weekend, finished just 17th.

"Honestly, I really don’t know what’s happened. Performance was pretty poor. Even in the half-distance Sprint race we had an unstable bike," said the Japanese, who hurt his hand in a huge Friday accident at turn 11. "There is no grip and the front end is always closing mid-corner. And, on exit the rear grip is really bad. So the bike is moving a lot.

"Mainly we’re losing acceleration. In the traction area, the bike is shaking a lot. It’s really difficult to keep the pace and stay in that group. Of course, it was not the result I was looking for. Tomorrow we don’t want to give up so we’ll try to discuss with the team, to try to improve at least the front feeling. Three or four times each lap it’s closing and it’s really difficult to stay on the bike."