Marquez 'elbows' to the top, talks Rivas ban

Marc Marquez wasted no time in putting down a marker as the MotoGP World Championship leader topped the times at Misano during free practice.

The Repsol Honda star was fastest in both FP1 and FP2 at the San Marino MotoGP, although team-mate and title rival Dani Pedrosa slashed the young rookie's advantage to just 0.033 seconds in the afternoon.

Marquez, whose bid for a fifth successive victory was brought to an end by Jorge Lorenzo following a thrilling race at the British MotoGP, holds a lead of 30 points over Pedrosa at the top of the standings.

He posted his fastest lap of the day in 1m 34.200s on his ninth of 22 laps in FP2 and remains ultra-confident he can continue to raise the bar higher tomorrow.

"I am happy with how things went today, and how we worked," said Marquez, who dislocated his left shoulder in warm-up at Silverstone.

"My shoulder is not a problem on the bike and I'm nearly at 100%. I feel very good and it's important that from Silverstone until here that I worked to recover and get power in my shoulder so I feel good.

"The track grip isn't perfect but it's bumpy. I feel a lot of bumps and the grip isn't great but it should improve. The biggest problem is the bumps though and we'll have to adapt our setup."

Marquez also spoke about a dramatic save, caught on camera, where he raised the bike back up with his elbow after losing the front.

"I was trying the hard front tyre and at that corner I knew that sometimes you have some movement [on the front] but with the hard tyre it was more aggressive. How I saved it? I don't know, I put my elbow down and when I opened my eyes I was still on the bike! I'd prefer to be more smooth and not have that moment."

Marquez then gave his opinion on the two race ban handed to Dani Rivas for causing an accident after the chequered flag, in the Moto2 warm-up session last time at Silverstone.

As a Moto2 rider Marquez was also punished for colliding with another rider after the end of practice, at Phillip Island in 2011, but received only a back of the grid start.

"I think these were different [incidents]," he said. "On that lap in Australia I was fast but Willairot was so slow and on the line in first gear. It was my mistake but you can't go around the whole circuit in first gear.

"Dani Rivas was completely different because he was talking with another rider and that is dangerous. In the end, race direction took their decision and maybe one race would have been enough but it was a dangerous incident for all the riders because Rivas touched two or three riders and there was a lot of riders there."