RiderTua.com – In Friday morning practice at COTA Texas, Marc Marquez felt uncomfortable in his debut with the Ducati Desmosedici on one of his most successful MotoGP circuits (7 wins with Honda). However, the successful modifications made by the Gresini team plus an understanding of how the Desmosedici should be driven on the Texas track, made the rider nicknamed Baby Alien move up to 3rd place in the time record.
“I’m happy, especially because we reacted well,” said Marquez, who finished the first day of practice in 3rd place behind Jorge Martin (Pramac Ducati) and Maverick Vinales (Aprilia).
Marc Marquez: Honda’s racing style is difficult to apply at COTA
Marc Marquez explained that he started the FP1 session a little uncomfortable. Then he tried to stay calm and worked quite hard with the team. He tried to provide information to his team, and they understood what Marc needed. Then they worked well, and in the afternoon he raced better.
Marc was indeed strong in the American GP, but at that time with Honda’s racing style (with a Honda bike).. With Ducati it was a different story, there had to be a lot of changes.. “We need to understand how to take advantage of the advantages of the (Ducati) bike. It’s true that the Ducati racing style exists “big difference compared to Honda at COTA, but I started to understand what I needed to do this afternoon. As usual, there are still 3 or 4 riders who are a little faster than us. So let’s see, if tomorrow we can be better,” added MM93.
Marquez admitted that qualifying on Saturday morning will be crucial, as he looks to improve his grid position (6th in Qatar and 8th in Portimao on the grid) so far this season. Marc said that carrying out a time attack at COTA was super difficult because there were many hard landing points and it was easy to make mistakes. “I’m not bad, but in terms of speed, the five of us are very similar, so qualifying will be important,” explained Marc.
In 9th position, Fabio di Giannantonio (Pertamina VR46) was the next best GP23 rider. Meanwhile, his teammate and younger brother, Alex, was only in 13th position, which means he had to take part in qualifying 1.
