Marquez fires warning shot that Yamaha pair cannot ignore

Marc Marquez may be starting behind Yamaha pair Fabio Quartararo and Maverick Vinales in the Spanish MotoGP but they are under no illusions it is the Repsol Honda rider that comes into the 2020 MotoGP opener as the rider to beat.

Months on from pre-season testing when rivals felt they had a sniff at getting the better of Marquez as he struggled with his 2020-spec Honda RC213V and contended with his shoulder injury, the six-time MotoGP champion heads into the first race of the year fully fit and back on form.

Part of the reason for this has been the decision to revert to the tried and tested 2019 chassis, albeit with the 2020 engine. Ominously for his rivals, he says FP4 was the first time he was able to rediscover the sweet spot that took him to 12 wins in 2019, as demonstrated by a startlingly quick run of lap times that no other rider could match.

“In FP4 the race pace was really good, the most difficult thing is to keep the rhythm and try to understand so the most important thing is to keep that race pace for a lot of laps. Tomorrow will be crucial, both Yamaha riders have a good pace too. We will have to understand where our level is and find the maximum.

“During pre-season I was on a different bike and you can see a different aerodynamic package but with the new rules we just understood it was not the moment to try new things and we come back and we have an evolution of the 2019 bike and during Wednesday and Friday the speed was there but the feeling was not there with the bike and that’s what I tried to find today. In FP4 I started to feel the sweet feeling to allow me to understand a better way the bike is asking to me to be fast and of course.”

With Marquez going on to qualify in third position, his front row counterparts Quartararo and Vinales says it will take a combination of tactics and speed to keep the Spaniard at bay in race trim.

“Looking at the pace of Marc it will be difficult to escape, because he is already faster than us,” admitted Petronas SRT’s Quartararo. “To escape from Marc will be so difficult because on paper he is faster but it is difficult to plan. Our top speed is not the best but we will try to group as small as possible then we will see what happens in the race.

“It is very difficult if we want to escape from Marc,” Vinales added. “He has a very good rhythm, we hope to finish with him in the last lap and then see what we can do.”