Marc Marquez “lost” - and explains why he chased a tow from Jorge Martin
Jorge Martin was not Marc Marquez's original target for a tow at Silverstone
Day one of the British MotoGP saw three Ducatis in the top four positions, but none of them were Marc Marquez, and none of them were GP23s.
Fabio di Giannantonio was the best-placed GP23 by the end of the day in sixth place, while Marquez, who ended the day 10th, was also behind Marco Bezzecchi in ninth.
Making Q2 was “the only positive thing of today,” Marquez said, illustrating the severity of his Silverstone struggles.
“Today was not a good day, I’m not happy,” he told media including Crash.net at Silverstone.
“The only positive is that we are in the top 10. Apart from that, the feeling was terrible. I need to work on myself, and we need to understand how to find a bit better feeling with the bike, and especially the lap time.”
The #93’s struggles had begun in FP1, he said: “We can say that from the first lap of FP1, we start in [a bad] way — on riding, on feeling with the bike, everything was super-difficult to understand.”
Being more specific about the areas he was struggling with, Marquez said that “going into the corner, that is [normally] one of my strong points, but right now I’m struggling [in that area].”
Further, Marquez said that he was struggling with rear grip. This is an area where “normally I felt super-good with Ducati,” Marquez said, but that is not the case in Silverstone.
Solutions were sought in both himself and the bike.
“I tried to work on myself,” Marquez said, adding that “the technicians tried to work on the setup and in the afternoon we made a small step. But, still, we are very far.”
Marquez reveals original target for tow
Marquez’s deficit at the end of the first day at Silverstone was 0.674 seconds to Jorge Martin, who he tried to follow during afternoon Practice in his time attack.
“Today was the first day [of the 2024 season] to follow somebody,” said Marquez, who at the start of the season said that, with the Ducati, he felt more comfortable to do time attack laps without a tow, having spent much of his latter years at Honda requiring a rider in front of him to achieve a competitive lap time.
“Today, I feel like I was lost. In the other tracks, I feel like ‘okay, I’m feeling good, I can do it [the fast lap]’, and I feel better alone. But, today I was lost.
“I went out behind Aleix [Espargaro] from the pits. But Aleix didn’t push and, of course, I say ‘I will not push, too’. So, then arrived [Jorge] Martin, and then that is when I followed Martin. But my initial plan was to follow Aleix.”
Looking to the future, Marquez warned that “this will not be the last circuit that I will struggle at.”
With championship leader Francesco Bagnaia (third-fastest on Friday at Silverstone) and second-placed title contender Jorge Martin (fastest overall) maintaining their strong form from before the summer break, such struggles mark Marquez out as the championship contender with the most complicated route to the title, especially considering his current 56-point deficit to the aforementioned Bagnaia.
