Alex Marquez: ‘It wasn’t a crazy choice, it was the right one’

After Jorge Martin’s late race woes at Phillip Island, Alex Marquez raised eyebrows when he was the only rider not to choose the hard rear tyre for the Thai MotoGP at Buriram.

Peter McLaren

30 Oct 2023

Alex Marquez, MotoGP race, Thailand MotoGP, 29 October

But the Gresini Ducati rider insisted it had been the right choice and was unrelated to his costly crash from third place.

Marquez used the extra grip from the medium rear to charge from seventh to third, directly behind race leaders Jorge Martin and Brad Binder, in the space of five laps.

The Spaniard remained on the tail of the KTM until disaster struck at the halfway mark of the 26 laps, when Marquez lost the front and slid into the gravel, walking away with his head in his hands at what might have been.

“Painful crash, because I was able to do a good start, good first laps,” Marquez said. “On lap 11 I did my fastest lap. I was feeling really good on the bike, and I think the rear tyre choice was the right one.

“I already did 24 laps with that tyre in free practice, and it was quite good. It wasn’t a crazy choice, it was the right one.

“Also Gigi [Dall’Igna] said to me, ‘with that it's also possible to make the race’. It was not like in Australia where it was crazy to put the soft. So we had everything, but we didn't take the opportunity home.

“Just in that corner, I was thinking already to try to attack Binder in Turn 12. So I just pushed a little bit more, I touched the inside line and it was really slippery," continued the Silverstone Sprint race winner.

“It is like it is, and sorry for the team, because today the bike was really good. I don't know what could happen at the end with the rear tyre, but at that moment, I was a little bit faster than them.

“My strategy was to have a little bit more than the rest in the first 10 laps, take the position. And from that moment, start to manage the tyres. But I saw also that after lap 10, the tyre was handling really really good.

“We'll never know what could happen in the last ten laps.”

Alex’s brother Marc Marquez admitted he also came close to racing with the medium rear on Sunday.

“It’s true that I was thinking a lot, about making an aggressive decision and choosing the softer rear tyre,” Marc Marquez said. “And maybe it was okay, I don’t know. But then I decided to choose the same as everybody.”