Marc Marquez 19th: “I’m in pain, but I need this weekend”
Fortunately, the Assen crash was a harmless lowside, but the Friday timesheets made brutal reading: 21st place in Practice 1 being followed by 19th in Practice 2.
The main reason, Marquez revealed afterwards, was pain from his damaged rib, while another rear tyre slide scare prompted caution in the fast corners.
Having chosen to withdraw from the Sachsenring after a punishing fifth fall in warm-up, when he suffered thumb and rib fractures as well as a hard knock to the ankle, Marquez got back on his ‘push-if you-dare’ RCV at Assen.
After the subdued 21st this morning, the sore Spaniard saved the fast rear slide as he picked up the pace in the afternoon, eventually moving into 16th.
But when Marquez tried to improve further by grabbing a tow behind Maverick Vinales in the final minutes, he soon lost the front and slid off through the long right-hand Turn 3.
The eight-time world champion stood up and walked away without giving his troublesome bike a second glance, while fast laps by others pushed him back to 19th and last of the full-time riders.
He now aims to simply try and complete the weekend, the last event before July’s summer break.
“I was suffering. The ankle and the finger is broken, but this was OK. Acceptable. But the rib, on the last sector it’s painful and especially when I start to breathe more and more, it’s more and more pain, and I'm losing a lot of time.
"Always when I use the pectoral muscle it’s painful [on the rib] - and braking points and change direction you are using this muscle all the time."
The rear tyre scare, similar to his Sachsenring highside, then added to Marquez’s misery in the fast sections.
“[After] that moment, I was more careful. Because that moment you saw on the TV was going out from the box. So I didn’t expect it. And for that reason, if you see the sectors, I was pushing in T1 and T2, but then in T3 and T4 I close the gas and finish the lap because there are fast corners and I don't want to crash there.
“The only point where I feel more or less OK is T1, because it's slow corners and it's where I push and I try to be faster. But I was all day like cruising, trying things and then from one run to another run, to try and go one second and a half seconds faster is not easy.
“And it's there where I did the mistake [behind Vinales] because I wasn't used to arriving at that speed at that corner. But it was a very soft crash.”
Marquez was 1.422s behind pace setter Marco Bezzecchi (VR46 Ducati) and only 0.235s ahead of stand-in team-mate Iker Lecuona, starting his second event on a Repsol Honda.
LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami was the top Honda rider on Friday, in 14th place (+0.872s).
Having missed direct Qualifying 2 access, Marquez - like all the other Honda riders - will now need to take part in Saturday’s Qualifying 1.
“Tomorrow in Qualifying 1 I will try to push a bit to not start on the last row, to try to start on the second last maybe, or third last. And finish the weekend," Marquez said of his targets.
Marc Marquez: "I need this weekend, I need to keep going"
Given his physical pain and lowly position on the timesheets, many will wonder what Marquez has to gain by continuing, rather than joining injured team-mate Joan Mir in aiming for a return at Silverstone in early August.
“I'm competing because I haven't been [racing] for one month and half [due to the thumb injury in Portimao]. And with the [bad] feeling of Sachsenring, to then be two months without the bike, believe me, that's not the best for a rider,” Marquez explained.
“So I need this weekend. I need it about the mental side. I need to keep riding, keep going and of course, when you have a difficult moment, the motivation is not there, but you need to keep your routines. You need to keep the same way to work and then believe to change the situation in the future.
"Because at home the situation will never change.”
As part of that process, Marquez is joining Nakagami in running chassis and electronic tests.
“Me and Nakagami today we were testing both chassis [Kalex and HRC] again, tomorrow I will have two bikes with the same chassis and just to understand and to keep going, to feel. We are trying some things in the electronic too,” he said.
“So it's true that my level this weekend is far from what I showed during all the year. But sometimes you need to [slow down] a bit.”
