Marc Marquez believes he can fight for the victory in tomorrow’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone despite a crash in qualifying that left him fifth on the grid. The championship leader will line up four places ahead of Jorge Lorenzo but three behind Valentino Rossi but with the true race pace of his rivals still unknown, Marquez expects to be competing at the front.
“It’s difficult to know as we don’t know the pace of the others but I believe I can fight for the victory. The podium is the main target but if everything is there, we will work for the victory. I will try”, he said.
Speaking after Friday’s running, Marquez spoke of the set-up dilemma facing him heading into today but the Repsol Honda was pleased with the progress made in a dry FP3 and feels he is in better shape for a dry Grand Prix.
“Yesterday I was worried because I knew there was a chance of a wet FP4 and a wet qualifying and we were a little bit out with the set-up. But in FP3, we did a huge step. We changed quite a lot with the bike and I felt much better and the lap times were fast.”
With FP4 usually the session where riders perfect their race set-up, Marquez and his rivals lost that opportunity today and as a result, he is expecting a race into the unknown.
“The only question mark for everybody is that nobody has done more than 10-12 laps with the tyres so we don’t know whether to use the soft or hard rear. The hard rear is dropping a lot so we will check (in warm-up) how we can manage them but that will be the big question mark for everybody.”
