Marc Márquez secured a spot in the second qualifying for the MotoGP Dutch GP this Friday. The Gresini rider posted the sixth-fastest time in the afternoon session, 0.511s behind the leader, Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati).
Although he acknowledged that he didn’t have as good a feeling in the afternoon as in the first free practice, the Spaniard emphasized that he started on the right foot in Assen and achieved the day’s goal of staying in the top ten:
– The feeling was super good this morning; it looked like we didn’t have a break, I went out and immediatly I felt super good, so it means we worked well during those three weeks. It’s true this afternoon that I struggle a bit more; I think I know a bit the reason, but I will understand tomorrow, so we’ll see. But the positive thing is that we are inside of the Q2, which looks normal, but isn’t normal because if you remember Le Mans and Catalunya I was far. But the target was to be there, and we achieved it. Tomorrow we need to keep working hard.
Regarding the worse sensations he had in the 60-minute session, Márquez explained: ‘One of the things that we changed too much from one bike to another one, one setup to other setup, and then in this race track with super high speed corners you need to be very precise. And then I was changing a lot the riding style, and then I chose one bike but I had a small problem and I did the lap time with the other one – that also has a good potential, but a different riding style. Tomorrow I would like to understand with my base bike, try to focus there and try to be closer to the guy who is two steps in front of everybody that is Pecco, and then is Maverick [Viñales], and then we have three/four riders that we are very close’.