Marc Marquez has acknowledged that he is “not about to challenge for the championship” in the 2022 MotoGP season, as seen by his performance in the last three races.
After almost fully recovering from a seriously damaged arm that kept him out of the 2020 season and the first two races of 2021, the six-time champion was anticipated to be a challenger for the 2022 championship.
However, Honda’s revolutionary redesign of the RC213V, combined with an eye problem that caused him to skip the Argentina round, has put him 45 points behind the title leader heading into the French Grand Prix this weekend.
Marquez admitted that he had no chances of victory this year after suffering on Friday at Le Mans and finishing 14th on the aggregate time sheets, with the Spaniard saying he is roughly four tenths off the top on long run speed.
“Before the season starts you work to get the title, then when the races start little by little the rivals put you where you are and what you can aim for,” Marquez said on Friday at Le Mans.
“That’s when you have to understand what you can aspire to. I tried.
“I had the eye injury and in these last three races in Austin, Portimao and Jerez I have seen that we are not ready to fight for the world championship.
“As much as I want to, we are not here to fight for the title.
“You have to set realistic goals, you cannot consider winning a race when you are struggling to get into the top 10, it would be frustration after frustration.
“We set realistic goals to have small motivations, like the fourth place in Jerez. Was it celebrated, yes, because it was a very good realistic goal we had set ourselves and we achieved it.
“We need to celebrate things to keep pushing, and hopefully we can celebrate victories in the future, but at the moment, we are not here to talk about anything.”
Looking ahead to Saturday’s race, Marquez believes that just making the top ten at the end of FP3 and earning a spot in the pole shootout session in qualifying will be a fantastic performance.
“Today I pushed, I tried to be there and that today our position was to be between eighth and 10th” he added.
“With used tyres we were there, but when we mounted the new tyres we have not improved. We need to see if I can take advantage of the new tyre in FP3.
“We won’t be in the top five, being in the top 10 would be a good result.”
Below are some of the most well-known MOTOGP riders’ uniforms, all of which are available at reasonable costs. Visit our link now if you are interested in the racing clothing collection:
Grand Prix, KTM, Marc Marquez, MOTO, Moto racing, Motocross, MotoGP
