“Struggling” Marc Marquez limits damage in Martin MotoGP Sprint battle: “Not smart to defend”

Marc Marquez insists he achieved his main target in the Austrian MotoGP Sprint despite losing the championship lead to Jorge Martin.

Starting from pole, Martin ran wide at Turn 1 before Marquez launched a close pass into the Turn 2A-B chicane.

Martin was forced wide and dropped to eighth, while Marquez then lost the lead to Pedro Acosta at the next corner.

“I predicted it was not a good idea to attack in Turn 1, because they will just use the run-off area and then it's for nothing. So I tried to prepare the attack [on Martin] for Turn 2,” Marquez explained.

“But the fact I attacked in Turn 2A meant I went very slow in Turn 2B, and then I braked too late in Turn 3, and I saw one bike [Acosta] and just he was faster than me.”

While Marquez settled into second, Martin charged back through the field and repassed the Ducati rider with a firm move at Turn 1 on lap eight of 14.

Marquez ran over the kerb on the exit but had already decided there was little value in aggressively defending the position.

“It's normal, but in Turn 1 it's okay, because I used the run-off area,” Marquez said of the move.

“The previous lap, I saw Bezzecchi behind +0.4s, and then I saw it was Martin +0.1s behind.

“I heard a bike very close and with seven laps to go, so it was not necessary, or not smart to defend very hard.”

Marquez added: “When you have the position [in a pass like that], you have the position. And it's like me [passing him] in Turn 2A.

“On the braking point, I was already very close to him. And when he attacked me in Turn 1, he was already very close to me.

“So you understand that one bike is close to you, and I was already prepared that somebody will arrive.”

Acosta’s late mistake then handed Martin victory ahead of Marquez and Marco Bezzecchi.

"The target was clear"

The result means Marquez has lost the championship lead he gained on a tiebreak at Misano, with Martin three points ahead going into Sunday’s grand prix.

“But the target was clear, just try to finish behind Jorge,” Marquez said. “Because Pedro and Jorge were faster than me.

“What I tried to avoid was not having any bikes in between.”

Acosta’s crash also meant Martin gained one more point over Marquez than he would have done had they finished second and third.

“Well, maybe in Valencia, yes!” Marquez said when asked if Acosta’s crash made the result worse for him. “But right now, just you cannot think about ‘all in’. It's try to be there, and one more time I was there, and this was the target.”

"We are struggling"

A double Red Bull Ring winner last season, Marquez confirmed that, as at the Buriram opener, both he and Ducati are “struggling” with the stiffer-construction rear tyre.

“We are struggling. We struggled a lot in Thailand, and we struggled again here, and we know that it's a different [tyre] casing,” Marquez said.

“It's the same for everybody, and the tyres are working well, but we need to understand how to be better with that casing. In Thailand, we struggled a lot, me and all the Ducatis. And here again, so we need to keep pushing.”

Asked if the tyre construction was the only explanation, Marquez replied:

“For me, yes, because we don't change a lot the bike compared to the other races, and I was fast, but all other Ducatis were also very fast. And here, since FP1, all Ducatis were struggling more than usual, but let's see.”

Alex Marquez was the best best Ducati rider, in fifth place.

Meanwhile, Marc also defended future Ducati team-mate Acosta over his late mistake while leading.

“We are riding on the limit, and it's a super small line to make a mistake. He was leading, but he was pushing, because Martin and myself were even catching him a bit.

“So we were pushing very, very hard, and in the end, this is racing.”