Alex Marquez: “Impossible to stop” Marco Bezzecchi at Indonesian MotoGP
After his dominant Sprint win at the Indonesian MotoGP, Marco Bezzecchi appears to be “impossible to stop” in the opinion of Alex Marquez.
Bezzecchi won the Sprint only by a couple of tenths, but he did so after dropping to eighth on the opening lap and closing a 2.4-second gap to Fermin Aldeguer in the final six laps of the race to beat the Gresini Racing rider on the final lap.
The Italian has been in a commanding position all weekend, setting a new lap record in qualifying to take pole position. Such has been his advantage over the field, Aldeguer’s teammate, Alex Marquez, feels there is no hope of stopping Bezzecchi on Sunday if he does not make a mistake.
“Here it is impossible to stop Bezzecchi, just the one that can stop him is himself, so make a mistake or something like that,” Marquez said.
“When you are riding with a lot of confidence as he is riding it’s a thing that can happen, but for the rest he is super-fast, he is flying especially in sector two, and here when you have a really good sector two the rest of the track you can relax a little bit and be more patient.
“It’s where they are making the difference, I saw it from yesterday morning when I just tried to follow him in FP1.
“I saw that it was impossible. I said ‘I’m really slow’, but then I saw that he was the only one that’s really fast, so I said ‘Okay, I’m with everybody, but he’s so fast’.
“It looks like they have another pace.”
Marquez, who is second in the championship and 92 points ahead of fourth-placed Bezzecchi in the riders’ standings, expects the Aprilia Racing rider to be strong at the next round in Australia as well.
“Also, Bezzecchi will be super-fast for sure in Australia because it’s really fast and it looks like in the fast corners – I already saw it in Misano – the Aprilia has something more,” he said.
“It’s something that we need to improve.”
“P4 today was the maximum”
As for his own Sprint, Marquez rode a fairly quiet race to fourth.
At one point, he was right behind Bezzecchi while he was trying to find his way through Luca Marini, but once Bezzecchi got clear track Marquez could not hold on.
The Spaniard, though, was pleased with his result, if not his performance.
“Not bad,” Marquez summarised, “but still many problems. Not feeling really great with the soft [compound] rear [tyre].
“Yesterday I crashed, today I crashed in qualifying, so not a good feeling there, rear pushing, and not turning.
“It’s the main problem that I have, but for the speed we decided to not change anything – it [doesn’t make sense] to change the bike just for the Sprint race, just we decided to go out and survive. This was the main thing.
“So, the feeling was not good but I survived in the best mood. I think P4 today was the maximum.”
The full-distance race on Sunday could offer Marquez a better chance of the MotoGP podium if he is able to race the medium-compound rear tyre, he feels.
“I think that if tomorrow the race tyre is the medium then we have more options to be on the podium or to be more close to the podium; if it’s the soft then we will try to try something on the Warm Up to see if it’s going to be better,” Marquez said before adding that he will try to learn from his teammate, the aforementioned Aldeguer, for Sunday’s race.
“We know where we need to go because we have Fermin [Aldeguer] there that is having a super-great pace – especially with the soft, [but not] with the medium – so we know where to go,” Marquez said.
“So we will try to make something for the Warm Up and I feel that if [the race tyre is the medium] we are more ready.”
On Aldeguer, Marquez added: “I think they have a slightly different base setup, but for always – with less grip, I will say like that, they go to the side that has less grip.
“Here it’s helping him, when he is putting the soft he can carry the speed in a good way, he can turn the bike, and the soft is a really good tyre here with a lot of grip.
“At the moment, we will wait a little bit to see the briefing of Ducati and Michelin to see which tyre is the tyre choice, the one that has more options for the tyre choice, and then we will decide if we will make some changes.”
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