Marc Marquez details how he overcame "uncomfortable" COTA start
Marc Marquez turns around an 'uncomfortable' start to the COTA weekend to claim third place by the end of Friday practice.
Marc Marquez made an ‘uncomfortable’ start to his Ducati debut at one of this most successful MotoGP circuits, COTA, on Friday morning.
But successful modifications by the Gresini team plus an understanding of how the Desmosedici needs to be ridden - at a Texan track where he won seven times for Honda - saw the #93 rise to third place on the timesheets.
“I’m happy, especially because we reacted in a good way,” said Marquez, who finished the day behind only Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin and Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales.
“We started FP1 riding a bit uncomfortable. Then we were calm, we worked quite hard with the team. I tried to give the information to them, they understood what I needed, we worked in a good way and this afternoon I was riding better.
“You need to understand how to take profit from a bike. It’s true that the riding style of the Ducati is a big difference compared to the Honda here, but I started to understand [what I needed to do] this afternoon.
“Still there are 3-4 riders - like always! - a bit faster than us, so let’s see if tomorrow we can be better.”
Marquez acknowledged that Saturday morning’s qualifying will be crucial, as he seeks to improve on sixth (Qatar) and eighth (Portimao) on the grid so far this season.
“The time attack here is super difficult because there are many hard brake points and it’s easy to do a mistake,” he said. “I was not bad, but on the pace, there are five of us very similar, so qualifying will be important.”
VR46’s Fabio di Giannantonio was the next best GP23 rider in ninth, with Marc’s team-mate and brother Alex only 13th, meaning he must take part in Qualifying 1.
