An unreachable ‘shark’
Marc Marquez finished in fourth place in the Austrian GP Qualifying, comfortably securing direct qualification to tomorrow’s Q2. The Spaniard from the Ducati factory team was preceded by Acosta’s KTM, Aldeguer’s other Ducati, and the returning Ai Ogura’s Aprilia. However, the reigning world champion was impressed – like everyone else – especially by the speeds of his future Ducati teammate. Acosta has never won a MotoGP race yet, but the moment of the ‘shark’ might finally have arrived: “Today he was clearly the fastest,” Marquez said about Acosta, speaking to Spanish journalists – “also here KTM, as has been seen before, have won races and been fast. For now, he is the favorite, but we, in our garage, keep working to always give one hundred percent.Keeping up with Acosta? That’s not our battle“, Marquez emphasized again.
The impression is that even this weekend the red #93 mainly wants to use his head: to avoid mistakes himself and possibly to unsettle some rivals. Using a football metaphor, one could say that this is a Marquez who in Austria wants to play on the counterattack and – at most – strike on the counter: “You have to attack in every race, but if you can’t beat someone…this is not the time to go all out. Obviously, there are always risks. I said it and I repeat it: from first to seventh there are less than 80 points. 100 points have been recovered in seven races; everyone is still in the championship fight,” the Ducati rider reiterated – I don’t exclude Pedro from the title race. He is the furthest behind, but I don’t exclude him. There are eight races left and seven races ago I was 102 points behind. Acosta is just over 70, so he is still in the World Championship fight“.
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“I pushed to the maximum”
Marquez then hinted that today, to earn direct access to Q2, he really pushed: “Today we had to push to the maximum. Sometimes you have to push to the maximum and other times not. We had to push to the maximum because we saw that from the start I wasn’t riding at my best, since here every year they change the rear tire carcass and the bike’s behavior is completely different. We had to keep adapting it. The positive thing is that from the first outing on Friday to the last one I progressively improved, I felt more and more comfortable and this gives me the peace of mind to keep improving“.
Read more Acosta surprise leader: “But tomorrow Ducati will improve”
