With third place on the grid for the Qatar Grand Prix, Marc Marquez puts himself in a good starting position – There is one important realisation for him even before the start
For Marc Marquez, the 2022 MotoGP season, which begins this weekend, is starting well so far. Over the course of the four free practice sessions and qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix, the Honda factory rider has yet to crash. He will start Sunday’s race from third on the grid, having started the weekend in P2 on Friday.
One of the key takeaways for Marquez from the Qatar weekend is his current physical condition after two injury-plagued years. “Now to be able to ride a race weekend again where I don’t have to worry about my physical condition, it’s like a different life,” Marquez beamed. Already on Friday, the Spaniard had noted with satisfaction that his physical condition was “not a problem in any way. “
Sportingly, Marquez rode onto the front row of the grid in Qatar qualifying on Saturday, having even led the Q2 classification in the interim. He had been fastest after the first attempt, due in no small part to a slipstream from Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia. “In qualifying it was very windy and there it was important to have someone as a reference. That’s what I did,” the Honda rider explained.
On his second attempt, Marquez then managed to improve, but missed pole by 0.272 seconds. What gives him even more hope than his speed on a flying lap is his pace in race set-up shown in FT4. Marquez had still had doubts about this point on Friday. On Saturday evening he does not want to talk about victory on Sunday, but he thinks he has a good chance of a podium finish.
“The most important thing for me was the fourth free practice when I was on my own. I had a consistent pace and the lap time came without any major problems. Now we have to see how it goes tomorrow. But the butterflies in my stomach are back,” said the recently long-suffering former World Champion.
Marquez is already going through the Qatar race in his head
“It’s true that with my pace I’m not the fastest. But I think I can race for the top places, even if not for the win,” said Marquez, going over the 22 laps of the race in his head.
“It will be decisive who leads the race,” Marquez says in the press conference after qualifying, speaking for pole setter Jorge Martin, second fastest Enea Bastianini and himself when he says: “The three of us here are not the ones with the strongest race pace. The guys with the best pace start further back. So the pace in the race will depend on who is riding at the front. And that will influence whether a bigger or smaller leading group forms. “
Apart from that, Marquez is already looking further ahead than just Sunday: “The most important thing will be to keep the consistency. The season is very long. This track has always been difficult for us. This time it’s going well so far. But the race has yet to be run. “
Pol Espargaro starts a season with his best feeling yet
Not only for Marc Marquez, but also for Honda teammate Pol Espargaro the first qualifying session of the new MotoGP season went encouragingly. He starts from the second row in sixth place. This puts him three positions behind Marquez, although he was just 63 thousandths of a second slower. In FT4 before qualifying, Espargaro had shown even stronger race pace than Marquez.
When asked if he was currently feeling the best he has ever felt before the start of a MotoGP season, Espargaro replied, “Yes, definitely. Until now I never had the pace to be in contention for the podium or even the win at the first race. Now I start from the second row here. But of course, any number of things can still happen, be it a technical problem or a human error. But I really have the feeling that we can seriously compete tomorrow. “
