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Marc Marquez will start the GP of Portugal from ninth position, on row 3. Just like in Austin, but the conditions in Portugal are very different than in Texas. In fact, on both days of practice it has rained at Portimao and no one has been able to find the optimal set-up in dry conditions on this difficult track. In America Marc's race started uphill due to a problem at the start that slowed him down relegating him to the last position, after his Honda started with great difficulty. It was a comeback race.
“When you have a problem it is very important to identify it and find a solution quickly. I can't say what happened (laughs) but it won't happen again - Marquez began to explain, adding - Obviously I'm happy with the speed we showed here at Portimao, but we were unlucky. Everyone at the start of Q2 was waiting to enter at the end because the track was drying and improving. I know that in these conditions I'm fast and that's why I went in for a quick, solid lap, but nothing special. Unfortunately in the last corner I saw the yellow flag, I slowed down a bit, I finished it because I wanted to know where I was, but the lap was taken away from me. In the end I'm 9th. At this point it will be important to in the warm-up to find a good set-up and start with the right tires. If we do these two things well, I'll try to give one hundred percent in the race ”.
This is a strange world championship: the leader, Bastianini, will start 18th.
“In a weekend like this one with wet conditions, cold conditions, mixed conditions, it’s easy to make mistakes, like nearly everybody did. But I didn’t expect to crash there because I was not pushing a lot. We didn't do many laps just to avoid any unnecessary risks. Everything will depend, as I said, on the conditions: if we struggle in the race, we will only try to finish the Grand Prix. Mir and Quartararo have always been fast here, and they start from the front, but apart from these two I don't think I can make any predictions about the others ”.
Was today's crash really necessary? You hit your head but nothing happened, no diplopia phenomenon.
“No crash is necessary. Of course, when I decided to come back in Austin, the question to my doctor was, ‘if I land again on my head, what’s going on?’ He said, ‘It doesn’t mean every time you land on your head it will appear. You will have the same risk as in Austin next year’. It’s also true that the Indonesian crash was a massive one. Here I landed and hit my head but nothing happened. I have pain on my neck, but that’s normal.”
When you returned to the pits we saw that Dr. Chartre came immediately to see you, what did he say to you?
“Dr Charte came straight to me and asked two or three questions. He said, ‘where did you crash? Which gear? Which corner?’ and in Indonesia, I didn’t answer. Today I answered straight away. But you could also see it from this crash: at Mandalika I stayed down for a while, here instead I immediately got to my feet, I picked up the bike, and so on. It’s true that they are much stricter than before.”
Too bad for that lap that was taken from you: you would have started further ahead.
“It’s a bit like Austin, I’m happy with the speed we showed but again we were unlucky. But these things can happen, today it impacted my lap time but tomorrow it could affect another rider. I don’t see any other solutions: when I saw the flag I slowed down, making a more internal line, then I opened up again. It is necessary for safety. As for the old Superpole-style qualifying in Superbike? I personally didn't like it, but that's okay. In the race you just need to have a little luck, certainly starting from ninth will be more difficult. The thing is that I can't start with a result in mind. After the warm-up we will know more. But if the race is dry we will be able to aim for the best result, which does not mean winning but finishing in the top five ”.
Have you already decided the tires and set-up to start with?
"I will start with the bike we used in the last Grand Prix, but we have no reference here, we cannot use the data from 2021 because it is a new bike".
So far this world championship has not yet shown any favourite.
“It's a strange championship, very long, with 21 races and anything can happen. There have been many crashes today and if you get hurt you can miss more than one race. We will have to be patient and see how the situation evolves ".
