Marquez 'closer to Yamaha riders' than expected

Marc Marquez was in buoyant mood after free practice at Assen on Friday after setting a strong race pace on the hard Michelin tyres.

The Repsol Honda rider topped the times in FP1 but Marquez opted to run the hard/hard Michelin combination in the afternoon session and ended the day eighth fastest overall, lapping in 1m 34.041s.

However, the championship leader was satisfied with his work on day one and said he was closer to the pace of the Yamaha riders than he expected.

“I kept working on the same tyre like I did in Mugello, Montmelo and Le Mans – try to concentrate on tyres for the race distance,” he said.

“Tomorrow of course will be a chance to put a new tyre in the end because I don’t want to go into QP1 like in Montmelo, but apart of that I am happy because I expect to be a bit more far from the Yamaha riders on Friday but we are close: they are fast, yes, but we will try to be competitive tomorrow and try to keep a good progression.”

Maverick Vinales was fastest on the Movistar Yamaha in FP2 on the softer option rear tyre, with Marquez six tenths behind.

Asked how much faster he could have been if he had used a soft tyre to push for a quick lap, Marquez said: “I don’t know, already with the hard tyre the time was not bad – 33.6 or 33.7, I don’t know what I did – but I feel good in FP2 and for that reason I kept the tyres for work because we need to understand for the race which tyre is the best one.”

Marquez survived a particularly big moment in FP2 at 200km/h, one of many front-end close shaves this season, and the reigning champion says he is still struggling with the front on new tyres.

He explained: “It takes a little bit to understand why I have the moments in the beginning in FP2. If you check a little bit, then this year I didn’t have many pole positions because for some reason this year I didn’t feel good with the new tyres; I don’t have the front feeling and for that reason in the beginning in FP2, I have a lot of moments with the front because it was new on new, and the rear was pushing too much to the front.

“But then when the tyres got used, then I was better and I was constant, so it was a compromise, a balance – work for the race or work for one lap.

“I didn’t expect them (moments) and I didn’t want to have a ‘safe’ crash in fourth gear at a very high-speed corner. Here at Assen, the speed is so high and to take the correct lines is difficult but we were already in FP2, but in the first run it is always difficult to understand the lines and to be concise and a small mistake is a big mistake here: you cannot adjust with the brakes or the gas and you need to keep the speed during all of the lap.”

Marquez’s pace bodes well and on Friday he did not feel too disadvantaged compared to the Yamaha and Ducati riders, describing the overall race pace as ‘very similar’.

“It is difficult to say because when we were on the hard/hard everybody, the race pace was very similar, 34 low; where we are losing (to) Yamaha is they are very stable in the fast corners and the Ducati is very fast in the short accelerations,” he said.

“We need to understand well and I was able to follow Yamaha riders this morning but we will keep working because we still have margins to improve.”

The 25-year-old stuck with the same base setting on his Honda that he used at Catalunya and has not yet opted to fully implement any of the changes tried by the team in the post-race test in Montmelo.

“At the moment I am using the same base that I used in Montmelo, I didn’t change a lot of things about the new items,” he said.

“We will see when we evaluate now if we will try something tomorrow because there were a few positive things in Montmelo, so now we need to evaluate because after Assen we have a test in Brno and maybe sometimes it is better to keep quiet during a race weekend, to understand your tyres, to do you 100 per-cent with what you have, then in Brno test recheck or try again and see how is the level.”