Marquez hasn’t reached his maximum yet

After ranking 17th on the first day of MotoGP testing at Mandalika, Marc Marquez admits he has yet to ‘really push.’

Marc Marquez, the eight-time world champion, ended day one of testing in 17th place on a day when the weather was unpredictably bad for MotoGP’s first ever visit to Mandalika.

Despite wet weather and an early red flag to clear the track, by the end of the day, representative lap times had begun to emerge.

Marquez, who had been in the top ten for much of the day, was dropped to P17 after a late flurry of improvements from the rest of the field, while teammate Pol Espargaro set the quickest time by more than four tenths.

If track conditions improve over the weekend, Marquez will be able to ride closer to the limit, which he did not do today.

“Well, still I didn’t push enough to arrive at the limit,” Marquez said when asked where he feels greatest on the new Indonesian track. “T1 I like it, I really like it. T3 is also a nice sector and also T4.”

“T2 I don’t like [laughs], it’s too fast. I mean it’s true that you are there and you just have to go. But it is really fast and there are still some bumps in the corner. If you take a big risk you can gain a lot of time. But at the moment, we need to keep calm.”

Conditions were extremely humid and energy-sapping, just as they were at the Sepang test last weekend, which was particularly the case for Marquez, who is close to full fitness but not quite there yet.

Despite improving track conditions, the Spaniard’s afternoon workload was decreased in order to ‘survive’ the next two days.

“I started the day with energy, I did many laps, many laps in a row to try and understand the track, the lines,” said the Repsol Honda rider. 

“But then already in the afternoon I said to the team, ‘let’s cool down and breath a little bit more in the box’. 

“In the afternoon the track was in a better way. We started to ride less but try bigger things because I need to survive tomorrow and Sunday.”

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