Marc Marquez “scared” of Enea Bastianini - but critical of Japanese MotoGP

Marc Marquez says he was “scared” of the threat Enea Bastianini posed to his MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix podium in a race he described as “boring”.

The Gresini rider launched from ninth on the grid and instantly found himself inside the top six on the opening lap, before inheriting third when Pedro Acosta crashed out of second on lap three of 24.

By the time Bastianini was able to break through to fourth on lap 10, Marquez was 2.5s clear of the factory Ducati rider - though this gap would come down as the race wore on.

A mistake from Marquez at Turn 1 on lap 14 heightened the Bastianini threat, though he was able to fend him off by just over half a second to secure the final podium spot.

“A boring race but a tactical race, especially because when I was in that third place, [Jorge] Martin and [Francesco] Bagnaia already opened a gap,” Marquez said.

“I was trying to find a way to catch that gap, to reduce that gap, but then when I tried to attack a bit more on the brakes I did a mistake in Turn 1.

“Then I give up and it was just time to control Bastianini, because he was riding in a very good way and I was a bit scared for those last laps of Bastianini.

“We are used to seeing some good lap times from him but we control in a good way.

“I think we were the fastest out there on the lap times.

“I was pushing, I was trying to be super careful about all these things. I was pushing a lot with the front tyre because the rear was finished and then I start to take a risk on the front and I say ‘okay, I will try’.

“Even like this I saw he was reducing even the gap, so as I say, a bit scared. The situation was not under control but I felt super good.”

Coming into the Japan weekend, Marquez had pinpointed qualifying as the area he needed to improve the most having suffered three successive crashes in Q2 sessions between the San Marino and Indonesian GPs.

He appeared to fix this at Motegi when he took provisional pole on Saturday, only for us lap to be cancelled for exceeding track limits.

“Yeah of course, when you start in the front everything is different,” he added when asked if starting further forward would have given him a chance to fight for victory.

“But okay, we start in ninth place, on the first lap we did well but not perfect, because at Turn 10 when Jorge overtook me, I missed a bit the acceleration, then [Jack] Miller overtook us at Turn 11 and I lost some time there.

“But okay, it’s like this, our crucial point will be to improve qualifying as I said the last races.

“It looked like we were able to do that this race but unfortunately we were unlucky, but okay, next race.”