Marc Marquez reveals “only mistake” of his wet French MotoGP ride

Marc Marquez says “the only small mistake” he made during the chaotic flag-to-flag MotoGP French Grand Prix was when he served his double long lap penalty.

The factory Ducati rider came through to finish second in a rain-affected grand prix at Le Mans on Sunday to extend his championship lead to 22 points, after crashes for rivals Pecco Bagnaia and Alex Marquez.

Marc Marquez, along with a number of others, came in to swap to dry bikes at the end of the warm-up lap after the original start was aborted when everyone came in initially for wet rubber.

Under new rules following the COTA chaos triggered by Marc Marquez, those who came in on the warm-up lap earned double long lap penalties to serve in the French GP.

Marquez did so, but admits he made an error when he tried to serve his first one as he almost ran into the back of Fermin Aldeguer and was forced to miss the loop.

“That double long lap was the only small mistake I did,” he told MotoGP’s After the Flag, “because I was trying to follow Alex in that moment to make the long lap in the same way, because like this I had somebody in front because normally the guy who is leading, if he arrives to some corners that are wet, he is the one doing the mistake.

“But I nearly hit Fermin and I was not clear if I was doing the long lap.

“So, then I just stayed in and it was the only small mistake. But all the rest was everything how I planned. And scoring 20 points plus yesterday, I can say that it was a good weekend.”

Marquez, who won the sprint on Saturday, noted after it that his crash out of the Spanish GP helped him to avoid a similar a mistake in the half-distance race at Le Mans.

He reiterated this after Sunday’s chaotic grand prix.

“Yeah, I mean I said to some TV, maybe today without that mistake in Jerez it was maybe another mistake here,” he added.

“I was controlling myself all the time, trying to score the maximum points as possible.

“I didn’t exaggerate, but especially I tried to be fully focused all the race because the first five, six laps were crazy.

“And it was super demanding on the mental side to understand what you need to do.

“But also when it was raining  during all the race, the track was changing super quick: less water, more water, less water, and the grip was changing a lot.

“It was difficult to adapt the riding style to the conditions.”

Johann Zarco “faster than us”, says Marc Marquez

When those who had switched to dry bikes went back to wets, and all long lap penalties were served, Johann Zarco - who started on wets - took the lead on the eighth tour.

Marc Marquez was around eight seconds adrift at this stage, but saw he was not able to take much time out of the eventual race winner and elected against pushing to chase him down.

Zarco ended the grand prix almost 20 seconds up the road.

“Today he was faster than us,” he noted.

“I got out and I say ‘ok, let’s see if he burns the tyres’ because normally when you do three, four laps on dry conditions on wets sometimes you destroy the tyres and you cannot ride fast on the wet.

“But I pushed two laps and I saw that I was just half a second or three tenths, or even zero, faster than him.

“I said eight seconds [gap] was too much, so I just tried to control the distance between me and Alex.”