It’s back to Spain for round seven of the MotoGP™ World Championship, held just outside the city of Barcelona. For Marc Marquez it is a home race, the Repsol Honda Team man eagerly waiting to see the members of his fan club back the stands. After missing out on victory by only 0.019s to Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) in Mugello, it’s now time to fight back and close the ten-point gap he has to the Yamaha rider in the championship. Surprisingly Marquez has only twice won the Catalan GP, in 2010 when in the 125cc class and in 2014 when he won the first ten races of the year. But it wasn’t so easy during his last visit, Marquez pushing beyond the limit on a difficult Honda and crashing out of the race. His DNF in 2015 was the first time since 2010 he had failed to finish inside the top three in Montmelo, the fall drew further emphasis to the exceedingly difficult season he was having.
The action doesn’t stop on Sunday as the MotoGP™ field will remain at the circuit for a test on Monday after the race. As with the Jerez test, Marquez and Honda are eagerly awaiting the extra track time and hoping to make yet another step forward. As shown in Mugello, the RC213V still has areas to improve on, especially in regards to acceleration. If Marquez can find that last little bit of speed he needs, it's sure to be a long battle for the title.
Marc Marquez: “There’s nothing like racing at home in front of your crowd and your fan club to make you feel good and give you extra motivation, even if in the end you must try and be as professional as always and to completely focus on the job at hand. We’ll see how it goes there, and as always we’ll work hard on the bike setup in order to make the most of what we have, an approach that has worked well enough so far. I know that Honda is working at 100% and at Montmeló we'll give our best to get another good result. Then at the Monday post-race test we’ll see if we’re able to find that half a tenth that could help us a lot, as we were able to do last year on the same occasion”