Marc Marquez: It's true that my confidence now is not very high
Eight-time world champion Marc Marquez continued his MotoGP comeback with a good first day at Le Mans as he finished inside the top ten for Repsol Honda.
Marc Marquez was one of a few riders to try and improve on dry tyres during a changing track in FP1, but whilst on his outlap, rain started to fall again and therefore had to abandon the idea.
It didn’t impact his ultimate positioning much however, as Marquez finished fifth before settling for eighth in the afternoon on combined times - a position that should be safe for automatic access to Q2.
In recent years Marquez has raised the bar when it comes to putting a fast lap together on a damp track with slick tyres.
Interestingly this was something put towards Marquez in his media debrief as he was asked whether a fully healthy ‘Marquez’ would have stuck at it in FP1 with the slicks on.
Marquez responded by saying: "It's true that my confidence now is not very high. It's true that for example after Jerez I think at home and everything and I need to take care about the risk at the moment.
"It's not like I don’t want to take a risk, but to control that risk I'm not in good physical condition, so some strange movement on the bike, maybe I cannot control like before.
"So I was waiting a bit and I don’t put the slick tyres before because I already had a good lap time on wets. I know that it was time to go to slicks, but I was not the first rider, I think I was the third or fourth rider with slicks.
"But five minutes before, already it was possible to go with slicks. But it's not the time to take a lot of risks in FP1. We will take risks tomorrow in qualifying and then the race, but always try to be inside the limits."
Marquez alluded to not being quite as comfortable in the dry, and with wet conditions expected to dominate the remainder of the weekend, it could be just what the 28 year-old needs as the physicality of riding a MotoGP bike will be reduced somewhat.
"My day has been a standard day for my comeback. I mean in wet conditions I feel not bad at all, it's true that it's less demanding physically and I feel better," added Marquez.
"In the dry I was struggling, I mean when I stopped in the box and saw P8, I said 'okay, better'.
"But I was struggling. We tried a few things on the bike in the second run but my feeling was not good, then I stopped. I thought it was a problem on the bike but it was my problem. I'm still not precise about the comments and feelings. But this is my job, I need to improve there.
"About the new tyres - just I ride, take care in T1, turn 3 and the change of directions because I was struggling a bit and on the hard brake points like turn 8 I was struggling.
"But apart from that we know where we are and even like this we are not very far from the top guys."
