Marc Marquez: “I looked behind and waited for Mir”

After ‘breaking three bones and one ligament in six races’, Marquez arrived in the UK insisting he would prioritise bike development over risk on the struggling Honda.

But it was still a surprise to see a rider renowned for fighting tooth and nail over every place looking over his shoulder and backing off.

Marquez was 18th and well outside the top nine point-scoring places when he allowed Mir through with four laps remaining. They crossed the finish line just 0.25s apart.

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“I went out, I tried to push the first two laps, I saw that the feeling was not good, and then I decided to be calm,” Marquez said.

“In one point, I looked behind and I saw that Mir was coming, then I decided to wait for him, to follow him the last three laps, to understand from the outside, from behind, what's going on with the bike.

“Because in the end, it's the same to finish 14th or 18th. And my ‘chip’ [mentality] was like in FP4 practice in the past: 30 minutes, 10 laps. And it's what I did, try to understand.

“Of course tomorrow I will try to do my race. But today, the feeling was no good so I decided to give some information to the team behind another Honda.”

And what did Marquez see?

“Following the others, I lose on acceleration. Following Mir, I never lose on acceleration. I was in the same line and I was able to follow him well.

“But following the others, everything becomes more and more difficult because you are losing on acceleration then you try to recover on the [corner] entry. So that's basically where we are losing more.”

Asked if it had been difficult to treat a race in that way, Marquez responded:

“Yeah, but in this first part of the season, in six races I broke three bones, I broke one ligament. In the end the approach now must be in a different way.

“Today, if I say ‘OK, now I will take a risk’, it was for 14th position. Not better. Maybe 5 seconds faster, the race. But not better. This means 14th position, more or less.

“But it was not like I had 2 or 3 seconds [a lap] in the pocket. I had half a second, three tenths in the pocket, not more.”

The sprint was much more positive for Marc’s brother Alex, who took his first MotoGP ‘win’ for Gresini Ducati.

“Of course I'm very happy with Alex. Last year he was very close to being out of MotoGP, and this year he's showing he has the potential,” Marc said.

“On wet conditions he's super fast, in dry conditions also he's consistently in the top 10, top 8, and now this will give to him a really good motivation and very good confidence.

“Already in the last weeks we trained together and he was very fast and very convinced, so now the next step is to try to be top 5, top 6 in dry conditions to make another step in the second part of the season.”

Yamaha's Franco Morbidelli was the leading rider on a Japanese machine in 15th place.

The #93 will start from 14th again in Sunday’s grand prix, which is expected to be dry.