MotoGP: Marquez, Zarco, Iannone a ‘dangerous front row’

MotoGP champion-elect Marc Marquez says he’s prepared for a wild few opening laps in tomorrow’s Valencian Grand Prix as he starts alongside Johann Zarco and Andrea Iannone. Only needing to finish inside the top eleven to secure the title regardless of what challenger Andrea Dovizioso can do, he says that it’ll nonetheless be a manic few opening laps.

“If you see ‘front row Marquez, Zarco, Iannone’ then you say ‘that is dangerous!’ Tomorrow in the first corner something will happen for sure! But for me it is just another race, but I know Zarco is very fast and he likes to push a lot in the first laps and that Iannone is a fighter. For me it’s ok, I’ll just try to do my best, and to try and just finish the race will be the most important thing.”

However, despite a crash in qualifying that saw him unable to fight to defend his fastest lap (even though he had already done enough to secure pole position), he’s confident that once he gets the opening laps out of the way he’ll have no problems by risking anything in tomorrow’s race.

“I had a crash in qualifying that frustrated me for a bit, though only for a few minutes. The fact is that I did not feel totally comfortable with the front in turn four during my first flying lap, and when I told Santi Hernández before going out for my second run he told me to pay attention to this. I kept pushing because I knew that I had to do so if I wanted to be faster, but then I fell.

“As I said on Thursday, the ‘Marquez style’ will be okay until after the warm up, and that I want to work in the same way as always, pushing hard during the practices. The most important thing is that we’ve worked well all weekend and that we’ve got a good pace on used tires. For the race we must make a switch and change. We must see where Dovi is, where we can finish and do our best.”