Marc Marquez gives Balaton Park safety verdict after Hungary MotoGP

Marc Marquez says Hungarian Grand Prix venue Balaton Park is “safe enough” for MotoGP following its calendar debut last weekend.

MotoGP returned to Hungary for the first time since 1992 last weekend, with Marc Marquez qualifying on pole and scoring his seventh successive double victory this season.

The anticlockwise layout is one of the tightest and twistiest on the current calendar, which limited overtaking opportunities, while some aspects of the circuit’s safety were called into question.

Balaton Park had to be adapted for MotoGP because the walls were too close to the circuit at points of the original layout, with numerous chicanes installed.

But this led to a scary moment in the grand prix when Enea Bastianini fell at Turn 12 and skidded across the chicane onto the racing line.

There were several pile-ups at the tight Turn 1 across all classes, while Pedro Acosta’s crashing KTM hit a camera tower at Turn 8 during qualifying.

Marc Marquez backing for Balaton Park

Despite this, championship leader Marc Marquez felt Balaton Park passed the safety threshold and believes most of the incidents seen have happened at other circuits.

“For me, it’s safe enough and it’s a good track for racing,” the Ducati rider said.

“It’s a different track, of course. It’s a tight track. But in the end, as we saw, if you want you can overtake.

“It’s true that you need to have, like, three, four tenths more than the rider in front if you want to overtake in a clean way.

“As I say, in 22 races you have to have different types of layouts.”

He added: “The fact that it rides on the left side already was a good sign for me.

“Of course the most important thing it’s a safe track. The crash of Bastianini [was on the limit] but we see already many times at Le Mans, in Austin, even I crashed this year on that Turn 4 and I crossed the track.

“When you have those changes of direction it can happen.

“But the walls are safe enough, looks like the crowd also was good. And it’s important to open MotoGP in new countries.”

Marc Marquez: Riders "didn't talk" about Turn 1 incident

The Hungarian Grand Prix drew a Sunday crowd of just under 33,000, making it one of the lowest of the season.

At the start of the sprint at Balaton Park, Fabio Quartararo outbraked himself and hit Bastianini’s KTM - an incident that was anticipated to be possible prior to the weekend due to the tight nature of Turn 1.

But Marquez says the incident wasn’t discussed by riders afterwards and noted that extra caution always has to be had at new tracks.

“No, we didn’t talk about it,” he said.

“We are in MotoGP and everybody knows what happens in that first corner.

“But as we’ve seen in the past, in Catalunya for example, how many times we had an issue or incident at the first corner.

“When you arrive always to a hard brake point and you are in a new circuit, it’s where the problems start.

“With less experience it’s easier to create an incident like Quartararo’s.

“But it can happen in racing. And [in the grand prix] we saw everybody was more careful. Moto2 and Moto3 had incidents, but not big ones. So, it was safe enough.”