Marquez: Taking podium means not being pushed into mistakes

While Marc Marquez says victory will always be his ultimate target at every race, the Repsol Honda rider concedes settling for a conservative result will be key to sealing the MotoGP world championship as he claimed second place to increase his lead to 67 points over Andrea Dovizioso.

Marquez revealed he was ‘on the limit’ throughout the Misano race while chasing the Ducati duo ahead of him and even though he profited with second place when Jorge Lorenzo crashed out on the penultimate lap he felt he didn’t have the pace to match the factory Ducati riders.

Marquez: Taking podium means not being pushed into mistakes

While Marc Marquez says victory will always be his ultimate target at every race, the Repsol Honda rider concedes settling for a conservative result will be key to sealing the MotoGP world championship as he claimed second place to increase his lead to 67 points over Andrea Dovizioso.

Marquez revealed he was ‘on the limit’ throughout the Misano race while chasing the Ducati duo ahead of him and even though he profited with second place when Jorge Lorenzo crashed out on the penultimate lap he felt he didn’t have the pace to match the factory Ducati riders.

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The reigning MotoGP world champion still opened up his points lead, with Dovizioso taking second place in the riders’ standings from Valentino Rossi, and despite missing out to the Italian rider he feels maximising his result without taking major risks will be key for the remainder of 2018.

“Today Dovi was riding perfect. I was losing a lot in the two main accelerations, but then I was able to recover on some brake points,” Dovizioso said. “But all race, all the 27 laps like this is difficult even if I managed it well. When I saw Dovi was going away, I tried to be behind Jorge to attack him at the end.

“But honestly speaking, I was on the limit. I was pushing too much in some areas. When you never give up sometimes you get something. For this we have 20 points. We go from Misano 67 points, so happy and now we are going to Aragon that is a racetrack that I like.”

Marquez, who will remain in Misano for a private test on Monday, says he’ll continue to attack ‘every weekend’ but only if he can protect his healthy championship lead rather than risking a mistake.

The Repsol Honda rider said if he attacked too hard to try to catch Dovizioso in Misano he risked crashing like Lorenzo and get ‘pushed to do a mistake’ which would risk his healthy points advantage.

“He [Dovizioso] wants to push me to do a mistake,” Marquez explained. “I have experience. I’m pushing every weekend. I pushed like in Austria until the last lap. I pushed here today and in Brno. I push but under control.

“Every Thursday we thought that we will win the race. Then during the weekend we see, but the mentality is what I say, attack to defend. What I cannot do is just do a stupid mistake.

“Today I tried to push. In Austria I pushed a lot until the last lap. In Aragon I will push again, but we will see. If we cannot win, the way is finish in the podium all the races. This is my target.”

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