Marc Marquez quizzed about Gresini: “Any satellite team can fight for victory”

During the San Marino MotoGP at Misano this weekend, reports emerged that Marquez has stunningly decided to join Gresini Racing next season to team with his brother Alex Marquez.

It would mean the six-time premier class champion is ending his lucrative Honda deal early, and making a stunning move to Ducati.

Without confirming his intention, Marquez was quoted by AS: “The Gresini team is a team with a lot of history, in which the motorcycles go very well and my brother has found his place perfectly. 

“While it is true that he came from a completely different situation than mine, I am in another situation. 

“He bet on his future and is doing very well with the Gresini team, which is a family story and my brother, although he is my brother, is a different person. 

“He is looking for a different type of environment, but it is a very professional team in which Enea Bastianini triumphed last year and my brother is doing very well, but nothing more.

“There are many professional teams with a very good technical level in the paddock and it is being shown that any satellite team can fight for victories every weekend.”

He said about wanting further glory: “I am in the phase where I want to be world champion, and to be world champion I have to see that the team I am on also wants to be. 

“I want to be like a rider who when he needs to change something has to react and, when things don't work out in a team and you have to change, you have to react. 

“If I see that reaction and that interest or I see that things are not being done as they should, well... I will look for a life when I don't have a contract. 

“If you have a contract, then you have to keep looking for the best for the project.”

Marquez was asked if Honda would allow him to leave, despite being contracted for 2024, if he expressed a desire to quit.

“I have not touched on that issue with Honda because I think it would not be good for the project right now,” he said. 

“They are very focused, they are working a lot and here we will test the new motorcycle. 

“If you intend to and have a contract with a brand, the worst thing you can do, I think, is to threaten to leave, because then everything can explode.

“So I think that my mentality with Honda has to be a constructive mentality, look for the best at all times and I think that now, personally, the best thing for the project is to stay united, keep working and I think that is how they also interpret it. 

“Because they haven't told me anything, so we'll see how this weekend goes and we'll see how Monday goes and we'll continue building to look for a better level for 2024.”

The Misano test on Monday is the first time that Marquez will gain an understanding of Honda’s development for next year, and he has long described its importance in terms of his future.

Now, it may arrive with Marquez already knowing that he is destined for Ducati.

He said about the importance of the test: “For me everything is important. Obviously, on Monday you have it out of the corner of your eye and you ask how the bike is, how it was in Japan, that they did some laps and you are interested, but this is important. 

“We have very small things, but we have things to try this weekend which are the two directions of the set up, which Nakagami will try and I will also try. 

“I have been testing it since the last grand prix and there is a little something to try to understand how to get more grip, traction, which is where we are lacking. 

“On Monday we will test the new bike and coming out of the pits we will know exactly if it is going better or worse.”

What’s more important, Marquez was asked, the instinct on Monday’s bike or Honda’s feelings for 2024?

“Both are important,” he answered. 

“The sensations with the bike on Monday are important because you know that it will be the bike for the advance of Valencia and from then on the bike cannot change much, but it is true that Honda is making moves, incorporating Japanese engineers from other departments and relying on the Formula 1 department. 

“There are many movements within Honda in Japan, sometimes you don't know it is there, but they are informing me about everything and there are new faces in the garage, new engineers and this as a rider is valued a lot. 

“But the final evaluation is the practice and the practice is on the track. 

“That's where, as I said last time, a rider is valued by the results and it doesn't matter if he trains for an hour on the bike or a thousand hours. 

“A rider values ​​the bike by the results, it doesn't matter if it's done in one way or another, or in an hour or a thousand. That is where I am going to evaluate.”