Marc Marquez insists that he’s prepared to “approach things in a different way” for the remainder of the 2023 MotoGP campaign following a tumultuous opening eight races of the year.
The factory Honda racer finally recovered to full-fitness for the start of ’23 following several years of continuous surgery and recuperation of the broken right arm he suffered in his nasty crash during the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix, the Spaniard getting the year underway perfectly at Portimao with pole position and a run to third in the sprint race.
A clash with Miguel Oliveira in Sunday’s GP though – which resulted in a broken hand that ruled him out for the next three events – set into motion a series of tricky race weekends where he showed speed, but only due to pushing Honda’s difficult RC213-V beyond its limits – a fact illustrated by crashes from both the French and Italian GP’s.
Having then missed the German and Dutch outings just prior to the summer break due to a fractured finger and ribs caused in morning warm-up at the Sachsenring – leaving Marquez without a single point scored so far across the opening eight races – Marquez admitted ahead of the British GP that he is keen to “approach things in a different way” going forward and not take as much risk for stronger results.
“During the summer break I had time to think about it a lot (future with Honda) and my main conclusion was that the approach taken from the start of the season was not the correct one because we approached in the way to try to win and fight for the title, and we are not ready,” explained Marquez.
“We need to work together to be ready in the future and for the second half of this season I need to approach things in a different way and try to be more realistic about what our performance is right now.
“We need to work together to improve the project, which includes the rider, bike and team.
“They (Honda) tested with Stefan Bradl at Misano and Jerez, they tried a few things but Honda decided I will start with the same bike as in Assen because nothing is clear.
“We have a small upgrade with the electronics to see if it’s a bit better, and apart from that we have a new aero package which I have chosen to not homologate because of technical reasons, and in any case we still have a lot of work to do to improve for the future.”
Marquez added that the long summer break has allowed him to largely recover from the injuries he picked up across the opening portion of the term, though he admitted that he still doesn’t have as much movement in his right leg as he would like.
“It’s true that at Assen, just after the sprint race, I decided to stop and the doctors said that was better because they thought the rip was more of a crack but then it turned out to be a real fracture, and it was moving a bit,” continued Marquez.
“So I had to rebuild these things during the summer, although it’s true the anchor on my right leg is still not working as I want but we have time and here at Silverstone we’ll try and get into the rhythm and see if we can get into a good way and have a good second part of the season.”
Keyword: Marquez keen to ‘approach things in a different way’ for rest of 2023