Marquez: Everyone tries to copy the best rider

Marc Marquez says it was inevitable his aggressive riding style would be imitated by other riders in MotoGP given his stunning run of success.

However, the Repsol Honda rider, who finished fourth fastest in this morning's dry free practice session at Sepang in Malaysia and second quickest in the wet behind Jorge Lorenzo in FP2, believes a combination of factors have created a more competitive finish to the season after the 21-year-old dominated the first part of the year with ten straight wins en route to securing the title for a second consecutive season.

"It looks like now the level is really, really close and you need to be 100 per cent; it's so close and it's difficult to overtake," Marquez said.

"In that situation, especially when someone tries to overtake Jorge [Lorenzo], immediately he tries to overtake and now it looks like the races are more tight, more competitive, and now it looks like the riding style of everybody is more and more aggressive. Maybe also the tyres give is a good confidence, the bikes are improved, and everything helps.

"In the past, also in practice, many riders like [Mick] Doohan were also aggressive and really strong on the brake point to overtake the riders, but the for some years we would only see one or two overtakes during the race," he added.

"But now it's becoming more competitive and for the show it is better but of course everybody tries to copy the best rider. Now I'm doing well but when Jorge or Dani [Pedrosa] is stronger than me people try to copy them."

Marquez, whose bid to match Doohan's 12 premier class wins in a season imploded at Phillip Island in Australia at the previous round as he crashed out of the lead, set a best dry lap at Sepang in 2m 01.670s, ending FP1 0.291s behind team-mate Dani Pedrosa.

In the wet, Marquez was the only rider who managed to get within one second of Lorenzo with a time of 2m 14.75s, which left him 0.242s behind the Movistar Yamaha.

"We know here that it gets dry pretty quick and this will be interesting in the race because we saw that with a lot of water in the first part of the session at the end it was nearly dry, not for slicks but some parts were dry," Marquez said.

"Tyre life is also really difficult to manage, we expect a dry race but if it's wet it will be interesting. On the last laps the tyre was almost finished; on the dry parts it was not so bad but it was spinning a lot on the wet parts and it was really difficult.

"The important thing is safety because you can overheat the tyre like I remember in the past. If it stays dry you must come in but you need to calculate the laps, but you can ride with wet tyres in the dry."