MotoGP, Marquez: “It’s a good thing Acosta doesn’t ride a Ducati and Aldeguer doesn’t have a GP26”

“The fact is it’s a change of circuit, and with the left corners, I started to ride in a better way,” he said. “The important thing is that my left side is still the same as before. In the first part of the season, I was not the fastest Ducati in the left corners, now I start to be the fastest one. Otherwise, the race was straightforward to manage: push hard at the start and then survive by managing the situation. I had this plan in mind and managed to put it into practice.”

Can you think about the podium or even winning on Sunday?
“On Thursday, I would never have said something like that, because I didn’t know how it would go. Starting from pole and after what I showed today, I’d like to get on the podium. I need to be very careful, because when I start to fade physically, the mental side is continuing on the racing mode, but the body is not following. A small mistake in a change direction with the body position, as happened at Le Mans, can cause a crash.  So it’s what we don’t want. Winning? I’m not ruling anything out, but we’ll have to see; a podium finish would certainly be great.”

You took quite a risk in qualifying today with the contact with Acosta.
“I thought about what to do first, because I was coming off a very intense session. I’d used up all my energy to be competitive in qualifying and was probably even pushing too hard. I went a bit wide on that braking point. With the new asphalt and seeing that he’d closed off my line, I reacted instinctively. It’s not something you think about rationally in that moment. It could have cost me dearly, because if you make a mistake with the first bike, you can compromise the entire qualifying session. Luckily, nothing happened, and I was able to continue with my program.“