Marc Marquez: 'Lucky' save, shoulder pain, cold Honda

Marc Marquez's Saturday at Misano could be summed up by two falls, a big save and seventh on the starting grid for Sunday's Emilia Romagna MotoGP.

Before last year's Jerez arm injuries, the eight time world champion was renowned for pulling off some breathtaking saves, meaning his latest legs-in-the-air scare looked like a return to the Marquez of the past.

But the rider himself said it was simply luck that kept him on the bike and that the Saturday incidents, in cold and damp conditions, illustrated season-long problems with the Honda as far as generating heat into the tyres.

"A big moment, a big save," Marquez said of the incident, at the beginning of Qualifying 2. "This save was lucky, I mean I cannot say 'I did this'. It was lucky.

"Then it's true that there was a big pain in the shoulder for the next 30-seconds but for the rest of qualifying it was not a real limitation.

"It was more the feeling with the bike, after all those moments I lost a lot the confidence and then I was not riding well. Even like this I did an acceptable lap time and then I said 'okay, wait until the last lap' because the feeling was not good."

But when Marquez tried for one final push to improve he was caught out once again and fell for the 22nd time this season.

"When you don’t have feeling and it's necessary to push for a lap time, something like this can happen. You push without feeling and I lost the front," he said.

The Spaniard added: "It's one of the problems we have this year. If you check a bit on the races with high temperatures we are able to ride well because we are struggling to get temperature on the tyres. Especially the rear tyres.

"For that reason in most of the races we go with the soft option because we are not putting temperature on the tyres. And basically today I suffered a lot with this part, to get the correct temperature.

"It's still an acceptable result, but today we were able to start minimum on the second row. But it's like this and the most important for tomorrow is get again the confidence with the bike."

Even so, Marquez – who took his second win of the season last time at COTA - currently doubts he'll be standing on the rostrum on Sunday afternoon.

"Even if we get again the confidence we are not ready to fight for the victory, or even the podium, but to finish in the top five would be a good race," he said.

Team-mate Pol Espargaro qualified as the top Honda rider in fourth place.

Iker Lecuona is equal with Marquez on 22 falls so far this season, the most for any rider, although Marquez missed the opening Qatar rounds.