English
Italiano
It was not a great weekend the one experienced in Assen by Marc Marquez. Having crashed on the second lap of the Dutch Sprint race, the Spanish champion seemed to have made amends for the mistake with a good fifth place in Sunday's race. The cold shower came at the end of the Grand Prix however, when Marc was given a 16" penalty for a front tyre pressure infraction, which dropped him down to 10th place.
"The difference was 0.01 bar for one lap. It's unfortunate, but it's the regulations. The only thing we talked about with the stewards, and for which the penalty came later, was the fact that, as you could see, I started the race well but then all of a sudden I noticed that there was something wrong with the front and I saw that the pressure was very low. I let Di Giannantonio pass to check the pressure and then I stayed behind him for the whole race. I was managing the situation well, but what I didn't expect, and what I couldn't control, was the contact with Enea in Turn 1," the Ducati rider commented, recounting the incident, "He pushed me out and on the lap where I went off the track I was a second slower, I didn't push hard enough in Turn 3 and Turn 5 because I didn't know how the tyres would behave. It took me two laps to catch up and those two passes didn't allow me to stay in the minimum percentage that I had to run, which was 15 laps today. On the last lap I was back in the right pressure, but on the second-to-last pass, where I thought I was on the inside, I was off by 0.01."
How did the rider from Cervera monitor the situation throughout the race? "There's a system that Ducati uses, which I can't go into detail about, but I knew I was out," he replied.
The 31-year-old would not even go into the merits of Bastianini's maneuver, but he expected a different conduct from the stewards.
"Honestly, I expected Enea to have to give up a position, because if you overtake a rider by touching him, and he goes off the track, I don't expect a big penalty, but that you have to give back the position. He, however, received no penalty while I was penalized for tyre pressure. Rulebook in hand, I agree with my penalty, but the reason I went to talk to Race Direction is that they have the data and could see that my tyre temperature dropped after the contact with Enea," he said, before explaining how much difference riding alone or being behind another rider makes: "Usually the difference is a lot, but today it wasn't much. For some reason, I couldn't get the front tyre temperature up and I struggled. The pressure was higher than 0.1 following Diggia."
No extenuating circumstances were granted to the Spaniard, who hopes that what happened today may serve to change the regulations for next year.
"They told me that it may be that they take into consideration what happened for the future, but right now these are the rules. I think maybe they can change them for the future, especially if someone hits you and you go off the track, but right now the rules are these and they can't be changed," said Marc, who went on to explain the difficulties he encountered today in calculating the right pressure.
"It's a rule that was imposed for safety and in the end I agree with the fact that it was introduced because we were using lower and lower pressures and if Michelin says that this way the tyre can explode or puncture, I can only agree with putting a rule. The problem is how to enforce it, especially in a case like today, where I was managing well until the contact with Bastianini. They will tell you, 'Put the pressure higher,' and in a way they are right. The fact is that today was one of those extremely difficult days, as happened in the Jerez Sprint, where there were a lot of penalties, because today there are many riders who stayed in the limits for zero laps or one lap, while I went out for one lap and 0.01 bar - he noted - Today, with the lower temperatures, the cold air, the clouds, the sun at times, the track temperature was changing a lot and the pressure was more difficult to calculate."
Problems that Bagnaia, who was in the lead from start to finish of the race, did not have.
"Pecco had slightly higher pressure from the beginning, because he knew he would be in the lead from the start. The problem is when you're in the middle of the group and we in fact expected that I would be there in the first few laps - clarified the Gresini team rider - Only when you're the fastest on the track and you know you're going to lead the race, you can use the same pressure adopted in practice."
Despite the penalty, the Catalan champion is not interested in finding the culprits of the incident.
"Michelin can give you some advice, but then we decide the pressure together with all the staff, both Ducati and Team Gresini," he explained, "It was everyone's mistake, as it was yesterday. Because even though the Sprint one was my mistake, we are a team. Today I tried to control, and so many of the Ducatis were really on the limit, but it was very difficult because of the alternating sun and clouds, which changed even 5°C of asphalt temperature. We were very tight and that made everything more complicated."
Leaving the Assen race behind, Marc talked about his expectations for the next round at Sachsenring, where he might have a good chance to make up for it.
"If we are fast at Sachsenring we will be at the same level as Bagnaia and Martin, we will not be faster than them. On the other hand, if we struggle for some reason, then they will be faster," he said, "Since Montmeló, the two of them are a little bit faster than everyone else, they have another pace, and even today I saw the times and they were very fast."
