Marc Marquez continued the rehabilitation abroad his Repsol Honda as Friday at Mugello unfolded with the Spaniard claiming 13th overall in MotoGP FP2.
Having gone around in circles over the past few races, repeatedly changing his setup to accommodate the arm and shoulder limitations, Marquez chose a different path as the Mugello weekend began. Focusing on being patient, remaining aware of his limitations but concentrating his efforts on where he is strong with his Honda RC213V.
“We did not change the setting of the bike a lot today, we worked more on small things and the position of the bike to help my riding. We need to be patient. I am not riding like I want to be riding but we could understand our limitations quite quickly. I knew it would be a hard weekend before we started. Tomorrow we will see the situation but for the moment we are focusing on ourselves, doing our laps and working on what we need to do. At the end of FP2 we did a bit of a time attack and were able to improve our position a bit.
“On the right corners, is where I’m struggling more - on the left corners I feel like always. Now, we arrive in a point where we don’t speak about the arm inside the box, we just speak about the bike, ‘try this, try the other thing, the position of the bike is this one’. It just takes time because if not, we will lose the way, we will lose everything. We just need to be patient, do what I can. I know that riding is good for me now. I’m not at my level, of course, I cannot ride to my level but it’s good in the way that I didn’t lose the speed. I know that I’m losing some performance but we believe that this will be better in the future.
“The biggest difference is the mentality. In Jerez, I was thinking a lot about my arm, how to improve, how to ride with the arm like this, I was coming in the box and speaking about the arm. ‘I have limitation there, put the soft tyre because…’, but now just I ride with what I need on the bike. I don’t think about the arm. I’m just conscious about my limitations, so in the point when I have the limitations, don’t push more, but in the other points just I’m riding which I believe is better and today the strategy was like we did in 2019. Start with the medium in the morning, put in the hard in the afternoon because in our data, with this temperature, we go with this tyre, and then, we don’t think about the arm, we just think about the bike. We know our limitations but this will improve in the future.”
Marquez also reflected on the progress and schedule of his arm’s recovery, explaining there should be no further surgery required.
“The plate is designed and put in the way that it will be always there. It’s not necessary to remove. I mean, of course if there’s pain in the bone or the plate is causing some effect that the doctor doesn’t like or I have some strange feeling, then we must remove but at the moment is not an option, so this is important.
“About the antibiotics, if the next check is fine - that should be after Catalunya - I will stop with antibiotics. So this will be also a future step for my physical condition, and then about the shoulder is something that we need to understand well. In the next check after the Catalunya GP also we will try to understand more deeply what’s going on in the shoulder, but the words that are repeated to me more this last year, are ‘be patient’.
“It’s true that the shoulder is more stable, this last month, but is where I have the biggest limitation. For example, today I straight away realised that with this circuit, I have a big limitation but anyway, is like this. After FP1 I say ‘Okay. I want to check and compare 2019, just to understand where I’m losing more’ and the three big change of directions are where I’m losing two-tenths, in each change of direction, compared to ‘19. The rest of the corners, I feel not bad.
“So, just be patient. It takes time. What I did today I think is just riding at my pace, just concentrate on a few things on the bike and I hope that we will have a better time in the future.”
