Marquez expected to contend with difficult Malaysia MotoGP race

The six-time MotoGP world champion qualified on the front row for Sunday’s race at Sepang, but admitted at the time that he had no idea how he achieved this as he spent the weekend “fighting against the bike”.

Anticipating a difficult race, Marquez slid out of the podium battle early on and ended up 14.3 seconds from the win in seventh.

“Was hard, long – too long,” Marquez said of his Sepang race.

“But the thing is when you are losing positions the race is longer. But it’s what we expected, because yesterday [qualifying] was not normal that performance.

“But in one lap you can do it, but in race pace I started in a strong way in the first two laps but immediately I saw what I was losing on the two main straights and the first sector was too much and I was risking too much.

“You can do four, five laps like that, but no more. So, I was waiting to find my place, I was waiting to do my rhythm because when the riders overtake you it’s not easy to understand.

“But then when [Joan] Mir and [Alex] Rins overtook me I felt in a good pace there.

“It’s true that they were a bit faster than me, but it’s what we expect. We took the maximum.

“It’s a circuit that the weak points of my riding style are here, but also the weak point of the bike are here.

“But even like this we finished seventh, yesterday I said if we finish between eighth and 10th it’s our result.”

Marquez says the race was more physically demanding on his recovering right shoulder than the previous ones had been, but that this was simply a consequence of him having to fight the bike to get the lap time from it.

“I mean, it’s a consequence,” he added.

“I feel a slow bike during the whole weekend, and then you are pushing more in the corners.

“When you are pushing more on a single lap you can do it. When you are pushing more in the race distance, you push more the tyres.

“I was pushing the tyre more, so the consequence the degradation of the tyre was higher.

“So, in the end I had zero grip. I was fighting against the bike, and I felt worse than in the other races but it’s not that it’s worse; it’s because you are fighting against the bike and you are using more energy.

“So, it was a long race, but we finished – too far from the first guy. But the most important thing for me was in wintertime I was the slowest one in race pace here.

“Now I…